 Section 20 of Winesburg, Ohio. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Section 20. Queer. Concerning Elmer Cowley. From his seat on a box in the roughboard shed that stuck like a bur on the rear of Cowley and Sun's store in Winesburg, Elmer Cowley, the junior member of the firm, could see through a dirty window into the print shop of the Winesburg Eagle. Elmer was putting new shoelaces in his shoes. They did not go in readily and he had to take the shoes off. With the shoes in his hand he sat looking at a large hole in the heel of one of his stockings. Then looking quickly up he saw George Willard, the only newspaper reporter in Winesburg, standing at the back door of the Eagle print shop and staring absentmindedly about. Well, well, what next? exclaimed the young man, with the shoes in his hand jumping to his feet and creeping away from the window. A flush crept in Elmer Cowley's face and his hands began to tremble. In Cowley and Sun's store a Jewish traveling salesman stood by the counter talking to his father. He imagined the reporter could hear what was being said and the thought made him furious. With one of his shoes still held in his hand he stood in the corner of the shed and stamped with a stocking foot upon the board floor. Cowley and Sun's store did not face the main street of Winesburg. The front was on Malmy Street and beyond it was Voigt's wagon shop and a shed for the sheltering of farmers' horses. Beside the store an alleyway ran beyond the main street stores and all-day drays and delivery wagons intent on bringing in and taking out goods passed up and down. The store itself was indescribable. Will Henderson once said of it that it sold everything and nothing. In the window facing Malmy Street stood a chunk of coal as large as an apple-barrow to indicate that orders for coal were taken. And beside the black mass of coal stood three combs of honey grown brown and dirty in their wooden frames. The honey had stood in the store window for six months. It was for sale, as were also the coat hangers, patent suspender buttons, cans of roof paint, bottles of rheumatism cure, and a substitute for coffee that companion the honey in its patient willingness to serve the public. Ebenezer Cowley, the man who stood in the store window listening to the eager patter of words that fell from the lips of the travelling man, was tall and lean and looked unwashed. On a scrawny neck was a large wane partially covered by a grey beard. He wore a long Prince Albert coat. The coat had been purchased to serve as a wedding garment. Before he became a merchant Ebenezer was a farmer, and after his marriage he wore the Prince Albert coat to church on Sundays and on Saturday afternoons when he came into town to trade. When he sold the farm to become a merchant he wore the coat constantly. It had become brown with age and was covered with grease spots, but in it Ebenezer always felt dressed up and ready for a day in town. As a merchant Ebenezer was not happily placed in life and he had not been happily placed as a farmer. Still he existed. His family, consisting of a daughter named Mabel and the son, lived with him in the rooms above the store and it did not cost him much to live. His troubles were not financial. His unhappiness as a merchant. Lay in the fact that when a travelling man with wares to be sold came in at the front door he was afraid. Behind the counter he stood shaking his head. He was afraid, first, that he would stubbornly refuse to buy and thus lose the opportunity to sell again. Second, that he would not be stubborn enough and would in a moment of weakness buy what could not be sold. In the store on the morning when Elmer Cowley saw George Willidge standing and apparently listening at the back door of the Eagle Print Shop, a situation had arisen that always stirred the son's wrath. The travelling man talked and Ebenezer listened, his whole figure expressing uncertainty. You see how quickly it is done, said the travelling man, who had for sale a small flat metal substitute for collar buttons. With the one hand he quickly unfastened the collar from his shirt and then fastened it on again. He assumed a flattering, wieldling tone. I tell you what, men have come in the end of all fooling with collar buttons and you were the man to make money out of this change that is coming. I am offering you the exclusive agency for this town. Take twenty dozen of these fasteners and I'll not visit any other store. I'll leave the field to you. The travelling man leaned over the counter and tapped with his finger on Ebenezer's breast. It's an opportunity and I want you to take it, he urged. A friend of mine told you about you. See that man, Cowley, he said? He's a live one. The travelling man paused and waited. Taking a book from his pocket he began writing out the order. Still holding the shoe in his hand, Elmer Cowley went through the store, past it to absorb men, to a glass showcase near the front door. He took a cheap revolver from the case and began to wave it about. You get out of here, he shrinked. We don't want any collar fasteners here. An idea came to him. Mind, I'm not making any threat, he added. I don't say I'll shoot. Maybe I just took this gun out of the case to look at it, but you better get out. Yes, sir, I'll say that. You better grab your things and get out. The young storekeeper's voice rose to a scream and going behind the counter he began to advance upon the two men. We're through being fools here, he cried. We ain't going to buy any more stuff that we begin to sell. We ain't going to keep on being queer to have folks staring and listening. You get out of here. The travelling man left. Raking the samples of collar fasteners off the counter into a black leather bag he ran. He was a small man, and very bold-legged, and he ran awkwardly. The black bag caught against the door and he stumbled and fell. Crazy, that's what he is. Crazy, he sputtered as he arose from the sidewalk and hurried away. In the store, Elmer Cowley and his father stared at each other. Now that the immediate object of his wrath had fled, the younger man was embarrassed. Well, I meant it. I think we've been queer long enough, he declared, going into the showcase and replacing the revolver. Sitting on a barrel, he pulled on and fastened the shoe he had been holding in his hand. He was waiting for some word of understanding from his father. But when Ebenezer spoke, his words only served to reawaken the wrath in the sun, and the young man ran out of the store without replying. Scratching his grey beard with his long, dirty fingers, the merchant looked at his son with the same wavering, uncertain stare with which he had confronted the travelling man. I'll be starched, he said softly. Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and starched. Elmer Cowley went out of Winesburg and along the country road the paralleled the railroad track. He did not know where he was going or what he was going to do. In the shelter of a deep cut where the road, after turning sharply to the right, tipped under the tracks, he stopped and the passion that had been the cause of his outburst in the store began to again find expression. I will not be queer, one to be looked at and listened to, he declared aloud. I'll be like the other people. I'll show that George Willard. He'll find out. I'll show him. The distraught young man stood in the middle of the road and glared back at the town. He did not know the reporter George Willard and had no special feeling concerning the tall boy who ran about town gathering the town news. The reporter had merely come, by his presence in the office and in the print shop of the Winesburg E.U., to stand for something in the young merchant's mind. He thought the boy who passed and re-passed Cowley and Son's store and who stopped to talk to people in the street must be thinking of him and perhaps laughing at him. George Willard, he felt, belonged to the town, typified the town, represented in his person the spirit of the town. Elmer Cowley could not have believed that George Willard had also his days of unhappiness. That vague hungers and secret unnameable desires visited also his mind. Did he not represent public opinion and had not the public opinion of Winesburg condemned the Cowleys to queerness? Did he not walk whistling and laughing through Main Street? Might not one by striking his person strike also the greater enemy, the thing that smiled and went on its way, the judgment of Winesburg. Elmer Cowley was extraordinarily tall and his arms were long and powerful. His hair, his eyebrows, and the downy beard that had begun to grow upon his chin were pale almost to whiteness. His teeth protruded from between his lips and his eyes were blue with the colorless blue of the marbles called Aggies that the boys in Winesburg carried in their pockets. Elmer had lived in Winesburg for a year and had made no friends. He was, he felt, one condemned to go through life without friends, and he hated the thought. Suddenly the tall young man trampled along the road with his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. The day was cold with a raw wind, but presently the sun began to shine and the road became soft and muddy. The tops of the ridges of frozen mud that formed the road began to melt and the mud clung to Elmer's shoes. His feet became cold. When he had gone several miles he turned off the road, crossed a field, and entered a wood. In the wood he gathered sticks to build a fire by which he sat trying to warm himself, miserable in body and in mind. For two hours he sat on the log by the fire, and then, arising and creeping cautiously through the mass of underbrush, he went to a fence and looked across fields to a small farmhouse surrounded by low sheds. A smile came to his lips, and he began making motions with his long arms to a man who was husking corn in one of the fields. In his hour of misery the young merchant had returned to the farm where he had lived through boyhood and where there was another human being to which he felt he could explain himself. The man on the farm was a half-witted old fellow-nade mook. He had once been employed by Ebenezer Cowley and had stayed on the farm when it was sold. The old man lived in one of those unpainted sheds at the back of the farmhouse and putted about all day in the fields. Mook, the half-wit, lived happily. With childlike faith he believed in the intelligence of the animals that lived in the sheds with him, and when he was lonely held long conversations with the cows, the pigs, and even with the chickens that ran about the barnyard. He, it was, would put the expression regarding being laundered into the mouth of his former employer. When excited or surprised by anything he smiled vaguely and muttered, I'll be washed and ironed well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and starched. When the half-witted old man left his husking of corn and came into the wood to meet Elmer Cowley, he was neither surprised nor especially interested in the sudden appearance of the young man. His feet also were cold, and he sat on the log by the fire, grateful for the warmth and apparently indifferent to what Elmer had to say. Elmer talked earnestly and with great freedom, walking up and down, waving his arms about. You don't understand what's the matter with me, so of course you don't care, he declared. With me it's different. Look how it has always been with me. Father is queer, and mother was queer too. Even the clothes mother used to wear were not like other people's clothes, and one look at the coat in which father goes about there in town thinking he's dressed up too. Why don't you get a new one? It wouldn't cost him much, I'll tell you why. Father doesn't know, and when mother was alive she didn't know either. Mabel's different. She knows, but she won't say anything. I will though. I'm not going to be stared at any longer. While I look here, Mooc, father doesn't know that his store there in town is just a queer jumble that a never sell the stuff he buys. He knows nothing about it. Sometimes he's a little worried that trade doesn't come and then he goes and buys something else. In the evenings he sits by the fire upstairs and said trade will come after a while. He isn't worried, he's queer. He don't know enough to be worried. The excited young man became more excited. He don't know, but I know, he shouted, stubbing the gaze down into the dumb, unresponsive face of the half-wit. I know too well. I can't stand it. When we lived out here it was different. I worked, and at night I went to bed and slept. I wasn't always seeing people and thinking as I am now. In the evening there in town I go to the post office or to the depot to see the train come in, and no one says anything to me. Everyone stands around and laughs and they talk, but they say nothing to me. Then I feel so queer that I can't talk either. I go away. I don't say anything. I can't. The fury of the young man became uncontrollably. I won't stand it, he yelled, looking up at the bare branches of the trees. I'm not made to stand it. Maddened by the dull face of the man, by the log, by the fire, Elmer turned and glared at him as he had glared back along the road at the town of Winesburg. Go on back to work, he screamed. What good does it do to me to come talk to you? A thought came to him and his voice dropped. I'm a coward too, eh? he muttered. Do you know why I came clear out here afoot? I had to tell someone you were the only one I could tell. I hunted out another queer one, you see. I ran away. That's what I did. I couldn't stand up to someone like that George Willard. I had to come to you. I ought to tell him and I will. Again his voice arose to a shout and his arms flew about. I will tell him. I won't be queer. I don't care what they think. I won't stand it. Elmer Cowley ran out of the woods, leaving the half-woods, sitting on the log before the fire. Presently the old man arose and climbing over the fence went back to his work in the corn. I'll be washed and ironed and starched, he declared. Well, well. I'll be washed and ironed. Mooc was interested. He went along a lane to a field where two cows took nibbling at a straw stack. Elmer was here, he said to the cows, Elmer's crazy. You better get behind the stack where he don't see you. He'll hurt someone yet, Elmer Will. At eight o'clock that evening, Elmer Cowley put his head in at the front door of the office of the Winesburg Eagle where George Willard sat writing. His cap was pulled down over his eyes and a sullen-determined look was on his face. You come on outside with me, he said, stepping in and closing the door. He kept his hand on the knob as though prepared to resist anyone else coming in. You just come along outside. I want to see you. George Willard and Elmer Cowley walked through the main street of Winesburg. The night was cold and George Willard had on a new overcoat and looked very spruce and dressed up. He thrust his hands into the overcoat pockets and looked inquiriling at his companion. He had long been wanting to make friends with the young merchant to find out what was in his mind. Now he thought he saw a chance and was delighted. I wonder what he's up to. Perhaps he thinks he has a piece of news for the paper. Can't be a fire because I haven't heard the fire bell and there isn't anyone running, he thought. In the main street of Winesburg, on the cold November evening, but few citizens appeared, and these hurried along, bent on getting to the stove at the back of some store. The windows of the store were frosted and the women rattled to tin sign that hung over the entrance to the stairway leading to Dr. Welling's office. Before Hearn's grocery, a basket of apples and a rack filled with new brooms stood on the sidewalk. Elmer Cowley stopped and stood facing George Willard. He tried to talk and his arms began to pump up and down. His face worked spasmodically. He seemed about to shout. Oh, you go on back, he cried. Don't stay out here with me. I ain't got anything to tell you. I don't want to see you at all. For three hours the distracted young merchant wandered through the resident streets of Winesburg blind with anger, bought on by his failure to declare his determination not to be queer. Bitterly the sense of defeat settled upon him and he wanted to weep. After the hours of futile sputtering at nothingness that had occupied the afternoon and his failure in the presence of the young reporter, he thought he could see no hope of a future for himself. And then a new idea dawned for him. In the darkness that surrounded him he began to see a light. Going to the now darkened store where Cowley and Son had for over a year waited vainly for trade to come, he crept stealthily in and felt about a barrel that stood by the stove at the rear. In the barrel beneath the shavings lay a tin box containing Cowley and Son's cash. Every evening Ebenezer Cowley put the box in the barrel when he closed the store and went upstairs to bed. They would never think of a careless place like that, he told himself, thinking of robbers. Elmer took twenty dollars, two ten dollar bills from the little roll containing perhaps four hundred dollars, the cash left from the sale of the farm. Then replacing the box beneath the shavings he went quietly out the front door and walked again in the streets. The idea that he thought he might put an end to all of his unhappiness was very simple. I'll get out of here, run away from home, he told himself. He knew that a local freight train passed the Winesburg at midnight and went on to Cleveland where it arrived at dawn. He would steal a ride on the local and when he got to Cleveland would lose himself in the crowds there. He would get work in some shop and become friends with the other workmen and would be indistinguishable. Then he could talk and laugh. He would no longer be queer and would make friends. Life would begin to have a warmth and meaning for him as it had for others. The tall, awkward young man striding through the streets laughed at himself because he had been angry and had been half afraid of George Willard. He decided he would have his talk with the young reporter before he left town, that he would tell him about things, perhaps challenge him, challenge all of Winesburg through him. A glow with new confidence Elmer went to the office of the new Willard House and pounded on the door. A sleep-eyed boy slept on a cot in the office. He received no salary but was fed at the hotel table and bore with pride the title of night clerk. Before the boy, Elmer was bold, insistent. You wake him up, he commanded. You tell him to come down by the depot. I got to see him. I'm going away on a local. Tell him to dress and come on down. I ain't got much time. The midnight localist finished his work in Winesburg and the trainsmen were coupling cars, swinging lanterns and preparing to resume their flight east. George Willard, rubbing his eyes and again wearing the new overcoat, ran down to the station platform of fire with curiosity. Well, here I am. What do you want? You got something to tell me, eh? He said. Elmer tried to explain. He wet his lips with his tongue and looked at the train that had begun to groan and get under way. Well, you see, he began then lost control of his tongue. I'll be washed in iron. I'll be washed in iron and starched, he muttered, half incoherently. Elmer danced with fury beside the groaning train in the darkness on the station platform. Lights leaped into the air and bobbed up and down before his eyes. Taking the two ten dollar bills from his pocket, he thrust him into George Willard's hand. Take them, he cried. I don't want them. Give them the father. I stole them. With a snarl of rage, he turned and his long arms began to flay the air. Like one struggling for release from hands that held him, he struck out, hitting George Willard blow after blow on the breast, the neck, the mouth. The young reporter rolled over on the platform, half unconscious, stunned by the terrific force of the blows, springing aboard the passing train and running over the tops of the cars and was sprang down to a flat car and lying on his face, looked back, trying to see the fallen man in the darkness. Pride surged up in him. I showed him, he cried. I guess I showed him. I ain't so queer. I guess I showed him. I ain't so queer. End of Section 20. Section 21 of Winesburg, Ohio. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Rink. Winesburg, Ohio. By Sherwood Anderson. Section 21. The Untold Lie. Ray Pearson and Hal Winters were farmhands employed on a farm three miles north of Winesburg. On Saturday afternoons, they came into town and wandered about through the streets with other fellows from the country. Ray was a quiet, rather nervous man of perhaps fifty, with a brown beard and shoulders rounded by too much and too hard labor. In his nature he was as unlike Hal Winters as two men can be unlike. Ray was an altogether serious man and had a little sharp-featured wife who had also a sharp voice. The two, with half a dozen thin-legged children, lived in a tumbled-down frame house beside a creek at the back end of the Wills Farm where Ray was employed. Hal Winters, his fellow employee, was a young fellow. He was not of the Ned Winters family, who were very respectable people in Winesburg, but was one of the three sons of the old man called Wind Peter Winters, who had a sawmill near Unionville, six miles away, and who was looked upon by everyone in Winesburg as a confirmed old reprobate. People from the part of Northern Ohio, in which Winesburg lies, will remember old Wind Peter by his unusual and tragic death. He got drunk one evening in town and started to drive home to Unionville along the railroad tracks. Henry Brattenburg, the butcher, who lived out that way, stopped him at the edge of the town and told him he was sure to meet the downtrain, but Wind Peter slashed at him with his whip and drove on. When the train struck and killed him and his two horses, a farmer and his wife, who were driving home along a nearby road, saw the accident. They said that old Wind Peter stood up on the seat of his wagon, raving and swearing at the onrushing locomotive, and that he fairly screamed with delight when the team, maddened by his incessant slashing at them, rushed straight ahead to certain death. Boys, like young George Willard and Seth Richmond, will remember the incident quite vividly, because, although everyone in our town said that the old man would go straight to hell, and that the community was better off without him, they had a secret conviction that he knew what he was doing and admired his foolish courage. Most boys have seasons of wishing they could die gloriously, instead of just being grocery clerks and going on with their hum-drum lives. But this is not the story of Wind Peter Winters, nor yet of his son, Hal, who worked on the Wills Farm with Ray Pearson. It is Ray's story. It will, however, be necessary to talk a little of young Hal so that you will get into the spirit of it. Hal was a bad one. Everyone said that. There were three of the Winters boys in that family, John, Hal, and Edward. All broad-shouldered big fellows, like Old Wind Peter himself, and all fighters, and woman chasers, and generally all-around bad ones. Hal was the worst of the lot, and always up to some devilment. He once stole a load of boards from his father's mill and sold them in Weinberg. With the money, he bought himself a suit of cheap, flashy clothes. Then he got drunk, and when his father came raving into town to find him, they met and fought with their fists on Main Street and were arrested and put into jail together. Hal went to work on the Wills Farm because there was a country school teacher out that way who had taken his fancy. He was only twenty-two then, but had already been in two or three of what were spoken of in Weinberg as women's scrapes. Everyone who heard of his infatuation for the school teacher was sure it would turn out badly. He'll only get her into trouble, you'll see, was the word that went around. And so these two men, Ray and Hal, were at work in a field on a day in the late October. They were husking corn, and occasionally something was said and they laughed. Then came silence. Ray, who was the more sensitive and always minded things more, had chapped hands and they hurt. He put them into his coat pockets and looked away across the fields. He was in a sad, distracted mood and was affected by the beauty of the country. If you knew the Weinberg country in the fall and how the low hills are all splashed with yellows and reds, you would understand his feeling. He began to think of the time long ago when he was a young fellow living with his father, then a baker in Weinberg, and how on such days he had wandered away into the woods to gather nuts, hunt rabbits, or just to loaf about and smoke his pipe. His marriage had come about through one of his days of wandering. He had induced a girl who waited on trade in his father's shop to go with him, and something had happened. He was thinking of that afternoon and how it had affected his whole life when a spirit of protest awoke in him. He had forgotten about Hal and muttered words, trick by Gad. That's what I was, trick by life and made a fool of, he said in a low voice. As though understanding his thoughts, Hal Winters spoke up. Well, has it been worthwhile? What about it, eh? What about marriage and all that? He asked and then laughed. Hal tried to keep on laughing, but he, too, was in an earnest mood. He began to talk earnestly. Has a fellow got to do it? He asked. Has he got to be harnessed up and driven through life like a horse? Hal didn't wait for an answer, but sprang to his feet and began to walk back and forth between the corn shocks. He was getting more and more excited. Bending down, he suddenly picked up an ear of the yellow corn and threw it at the fence. I've got now gone through in trouble, he said. I'm telling you, but you keep your mouth shut. Ray Pearson arose and stood staring. He was almost a foot shorter than Hal, and when the young man came and put his two hands on the older man's shoulders, they made a picture. There they stood, in the big empty field with the quiet corn shocks standing in rows behind them, in the red and yellow hills in the distance, and from being just two indifferent workmen, they had become all alive to each other. Hal sensed it, and because that was his way, he laughed. Well, old daddy, he said awkwardly. Come on, advise me. I've got nail in trouble. Perhaps you've been in the same fix yourself. I know what everyone would say is the right thing to do, but what do you say? Shall I marry and settle down? Shall I put myself into the harness to be worn out like an old horse? You know me, Ray. There can't anyone break me, but I can break myself. Shall I do it, or shall I tell nails to go to the devil? Come on, you tell me. Whatever you say, Ray, I'll do. Ray couldn't answer. He shook Hal's hands loose, and turning, walked straight away toward the barn. He was a sensitive man, and there were tears in his eyes. He knew there was only one thing to say to Hal Winters, son of old, when Peter Winters, only one thing that all his own training and all the beliefs of the people he knew would approve, but for his life he couldn't say what he knew he should say. At half past four that afternoon, Ray was puttering about the barnyard when his wife came up the lane along the creek and called him. After the talk with Hal, he hadn't returned to the cornfield, but worked about the barn. He had already done the evening chores, and had seen Hal, dressed and ready for a roistering night in town, come out of the farmhouse and go into the road. Along the path to his own house he trudged behind his wife, looking at the ground and thinking. He couldn't make out what was wrong. Every time he raised his eyes and saw the beauty of the country in the failing light, he wanted to do something he had never done before, shout, or scream, or hit his wife with his fists, or something equally unexpected and terrifying. Along the path he went, scratching his head and trying to make it out. He looked hard at his wife's back, but she seemed all right. She only wanted him to go into town for groceries, and as soon as she had told him what she wanted, began to scold. You're always puttering, she said. Now I want you to hustle. There isn't anything in the house for supper, and you've got to get to town and back in a hurry. Ray went into his own house and took an overcoat from a hook back of the door. It was torn about the pockets, and the collar was shiny. His wife went into the bedroom and presently came out with a soil cloth in one hand and three silver dollars in the other. Somewhere in the house a child wept bitterly, and a dog that had been sleeping by the stove arose and yawned. Again the wife scolded. The children will cry and cry. Why are you always puttering? She asked. Ray went out of the house and climbed the fence into a field. It was just growing dark and the scene that lay before him was lovely. All the low hills were washed with color, and even the little clusters of bushes in the corners of the fences were alive with beauty. The whole world seemed to Ray Pearson to have become alive with something, just as he and Hal had suddenly become alive when they stood in the cornfield staring into each other's eyes. The beauty of the country about Weinsberg was too much for Ray on that fall evening. That is all there was to it. He could not stand it. Of a sudden he forgot all about being a quiet old farm hand, and throwing off the torn overcoat began to run across the field. As he ran he shouted a protest against his life, against all life, against everything that makes life ugly. There was no promise made. He cried into the empty spaces that lay about him. I didn't promise my many anything, and Hal hasn't made any promise to Nell. I know he hasn't. She went into the woods with him because she wanted to go. What he wanted, she wanted. Why should I pay? Why should Hal pay? Why should anyone pay? I don't want Hal to become old and worn out. I'll tell him. I won't let it go on. I'll catch Hal before he gets to town, and I'll tell him. Ray ran clumsily, and once he stumbled and fell down. I must catch Hal and tell him. He kept thinking, and although his breath came in gasps he kept running harder and harder. As he ran he thought of things that hadn't come into his mind for years. How at the time he married he had planned to go west to his uncle in Portland, Oregon. How he hadn't wanted to be a farm hand, but had thought when he got out west he would go to sea and be a sailor, or get a job on a ranch, and ride a horse into western towns, shouting and laughing and waking the people in the houses with his wild cries. Then as he ran he remembered his children, and in fancy felt their hands clutching at him. All of his thoughts of himself were involved with the thoughts of Hal, and he thought the children were clutching at the younger man also. They are the accidents of life Hal, he cried. They are not mine or yours. I had nothing to do with them. Darkness began to spread over the fields as Ray Pearson ran on and on. His breath came in little sobs. When he came to the fence at the edge of the road and confronted Hal Winters, all dressed up and smoking a pipe as he walked jauntily along. He could not have told what he thought or what he wanted. Ray Pearson lost his nerve. And this is really the end of the story of what happened to him. It was almost dark when he got to the fence, and he put his hands on the top bar and stood staring. Hal Winters jumped a ditch and coming up close to Ray put his hands into his pockets and laughed. He seemed to have lost his own sense of what had happened in the cornfield, and when he put up a strong hand and took hold of the lapel of Ray's coat, he shook the old man as he might have shaken a dog that had misbehaved. He came to tell me, eh? He said, Well, never mind telling me anything. I'm not a coward, and I've already made up my mind. He laughed again and jumped back across the ditch. Nell ain't no fool. He said, She didn't ask me to marry her. I want to marry her. I want to marry her. I want to settle down and have kids. Ray Pearson also laughed. He felt like laughing at himself and all the world. As the form of Hal Winters disappeared in the dusk that lay over the road that led to Winesburg, he turned and walked slowly back across the fields to where he had left his torn overcoat. As he went, some memory of pleasant evenings spent with the thin-legged children in the tumbledown house by the creek must have come into his mind, for he muttered words, It's just as well. Whatever I told him would have been a lie. He said softly. And then his form also disappeared into the darkness of the fields. End of section 21, The Untold Lie. Section 22 of Winesburg, Ohio. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Miguel Rodriguez. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Section 22, Drink, Concerning Tom Foster. Tom Foster came to Winesburg from Cincinnati when he was still young and forget many new impressions. His grandmother had been raised on a farm near the town and as a young girl had gone to school there when Winesburg was a village of 12 or 15 houses clustered about a general store on the Trumun Pipe. What a life the old woman had led since she went away from the frontier settlement and what a strong capable little old thing she was. She had been in Kansas, in Canada and in New York City traveling about with her husband a mechanic before he died. Later she went to stay with her daughter who had also married a mechanic and lived in Covington, Kentucky across the river from Cincinnati. Then began the hard years for Tom Foster's grandmother. First her son-in-law was killed by a policeman during a strike and then Tom's mother became an invalid and died also. The grandmother had saved a little money but it was swept away by the illness of the daughter and by the cost of the two funerals. She became a half worn out old woman worker and lived with the grandson above a junk shop on a side street in Cincinnati. For five years she scrubbed the floors in an office building and then got a place as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Her hands were all twisted out of shape. When she took hold of a mop or a broom handle the hands looked like the dried stems of an old creeping vine clinging to a tree. The old woman came back to Winesburg as soon as she got the chance. One evening as she was coming home from work she found a pocketbook containing $37 and that opened the way. The trip was a great adventure for the boy. It was past 7 o'clock at night and the grandmother came home with a pocketbook held tightly in her old hands and she was so excited she could scarcely speak. She insisted on leaving Cincinnati that night saying that if they stayed until morning the owner of the money would be sure to find them out and make trouble. Tom, who was then 16 years old had to go trudging off to the station with the old woman. Bearing all of their earthly belongings done up in a worn out blanket and slung across his bag. By his side walked the grandmother urging them forward. Her toothless old mouth twitched nervously and when Tom grew weary and wanted to put the pack down on a street crossing she snatched it up and if he had not prevented would have slung it across her own back. When they got into the train and it had run out of the city she was as delighted as a girl and talked as the boy had never heard her talk before. All through the night as the train rattled along the grandmother told Tom tales of Winesburg and of how he would enjoy his life working in the fields and shooting wild things in the woods there. She could not believe that the tiny village of 50 years before had grown into a thriving town in her absence and in the morning when the train came to Winesburg she wanted to get off. It isn't what I thought it may be hard for you here she said and then the train went on its way and the two stood confused not knowing where to turn in the presence of Albert Longworth the Winesburg baggage mast. But Tom Foster did get along all the way he was one to get along anywhere Mrs. White, the banker's wife employed his grandmother to work in the kitchen and he got a place as stable boy from the banker's new brick barn. In Winesburg, servants were hard to get the woman who wanted help in her housework employed a hired girl who insisted on sitting at the table with the family Mrs. White was sick of hired girls and snatched at the chance to get hold of the old city woman. She furnished a room for the boy Tom upstairs in the barn he could know the law and run errands when the horses were in the barn she explained to her husband Tom Foster was rather small for his age and had a large head covered with stiff black hair that stood straight up the hair emphasized the bigness of his head his voice was the softest thing imaginable and he was himself so gentle and quiet that he slipped into the life of the town without attracting the least bit of attention one could not help wondering where Tom Foster got his gentleness in Cincinnati he had lived in a neighborhood where gangs of tough boys prowled through the streets and all through his early formative years he ran about with tough boys for a while he was a messenger for a telegraph number and delivered messages in the neighborhood sprinkled with houses of prostitution the women in the houses knew and loved Tom Foster and the tough boys in the gangs loved him also that was one thing that helped him escape in an odd way he stood in the shadow of the wall of life was meant to stand in the shadow he saw the men and women in the houses of lust sensed their casual and horrible love affairs saw boys fighting and listened to their tales of thieving and drunkenness unmoved and strangely unaffected once Tom did steal that was while he still lived in the city the grandmother was ill at the time and he himself was out of work there was nothing to eat in the house and so he went into a harness shop on a side street and stole a dollar and 75 cents out of the cash drawer the harness shop was run by an old man with a long mustache he saw the boy lurking about and thought nothing of it when he went out into the street to talk to a teamster Tom opened the cash drawer and he walked away later he was caught and his grandmother settled the matter by offering to come twice a week for a month and scrub the shop the boy was ashamed but he was rather glad too it is all right to be ashamed and makes me understand new things he said to the grandmother who didn't know what the boy was talking about but she loved him so much that it didn't matter whether she understood or not for a year Tom Foster left the house with his wife and then lost his place there he didn't take very good care of the horses and he was a constant source of irritation to the banker's wife she told him to mow the lawn and he forgot then she sent him to the store or to the post office and he did not come back but joined a group of men and boys and spent the whole afternoon standing about listening and occasionally when addressed saying a few words there were a few rowdy boys running through the streets at night so in Winesburg among the citizens he had always the power to be part of and yet distinctly a part from the life about him after Tom lost his place at banker whites he did not live with his grandmother although often in the evening she came to visit him he rented a room at the rear of a little frame building belonging to old Ruthless Whiting the building was on Duane Street the office by the old moon who had become too feeble and forgetful for the practice of his profession but did not realize his inefficiency he liked Tom and let him have the moon for a dollar a month in the late afternoon when the lawyer had gone home the boy had the place to himself and spent hours lying on the floor by the stove and thinking of things in the evening the grandmother came and sat in the lawyer's chair and always did in the presence of everyone often the old woman talked with great vigor sometimes she was angry about some happening at the banker's house and scolded away for hours out of her own earnings she bought a mop and regularly scrubbed the lawyer's office then when the place was spotlessly clean and smelled clean she lighted her clay pipe and she and Tom had a smoke together when you get ready to die then I will die also when you get ready to die Tom Foster enjoyed life in Weinberg he did odd jobs such as cutting wood for kitchen stoves and mowing the grass before houses in late May and early June he picked strawberries in the fields he had time to lope and he enjoyed loping banker White had given him a cast-off coat which was too large for him but his grandmother cut it down and he also had an overcoat in the same place that was lined with fur the fur was worn away in spots but the coat was warm and in the winter Tom slept in it he thought his method of getting along good enough and was happy and satisfied with the way life in Weinberg had turned out for him the most absurd little things made Tom Foster happy that I suppose was why people loved him in Hearn's Grocery they would be roasting coffee in the fray and the rich odor invaded Lower Main Street Tom Foster appeared and sat in the box at the rear of the store for an hour he did not move but sat perfectly still filling his being with a spicy odor that made him half drunk with happiness I like it he said gently it makes me think of things far away places and things like that one night Tom Foster got drunk that came about in a curious way he never had been drunk before and indeed in all his life had never taken a drink with anything intoxicated but he felt he needed to be drunk at one time and so went and did it in Cincinnati when he lived there Tom had found out many things things about ugliness and crime and lust indeed he knew more of these things more of sex in particular had presented itself to him in a quite horrible way and had made a deep impression on his mind he thought after what he had seen of the women standing before the swallowed houses on cold nights and the look he had seen in the eyes of the man who stopped to talk to them that he would put sex altogether out of his own life one of the women of the neighborhood tempted him once and he went into a room with him that came into the eyes of the woman it sickened him and in a very terrible way left a scar on his soul he had always before thought of women as quite innocent things much like his grandmother but after that one experience in the room he dismissed women from his mind so gentle was his nature that he could not hate anything and not being able to understand he decided to forget and Tom did forget that he had lived there for two years something began to stir in him on all sides he saw youth making love and he was himself a youth before he knew what had happened he was in love also he fell in love with Helen White daughter of the man for whom he had worked and found himself thinking of her at night that was a problem for Tom and he settled it in his own way he let himself think of Helen White whenever her figure came into his mind and only concerned himself with the manner of his thoughts he had a fight a quiet determined little fight of his own to keep his desires in the channel where he thought they belonged but on the whole he was victorious and then came the spring night and he got drunk Tom was wild on that night he was like an innocent young buck of the forest in the garden of some maddening weed the thing began ran its course and was ended in one night and you may be sure that no one in Weinberg was any the worse for Tom's outbreak in the first place the night was one to make a sense of nature drunk the trees along the residence streets of the town were all newly clothed in soft green leaves in the gardens behind the houses men were puttering about in vegetable gardens and in the air there was a wading kind of silence very stern to the blood Tom left his room on going street just as the young night began to make itself felt first he walked through the streets going softly and quietly along thinking thoughts that he tried to put into words he said that Helen White was a flame dancing in the air and that he was a little tree without leaves standing out sharply against the sky then he said that she was a wind a strong terrible wind coming out of the darkness of the stormy sea and that he was a boat left on the shore of the sea by a fishery that idea pleased the boy and he sauntered along playing with it he went into Main Street and sat on the curbing before whackers to Bathurst Hall for an hour he lingered about listening to the talk of man but it did not interest him much and he slipped away then he decided to get drunk then he went to Willie Saloon and bought a bottle of whiskey putting the bottle into his pocket he walked out of town wanting to be alone to think more thoughts and to drink the whiskey Tom got drunk sitting on a bank of new grass beside the road about a mile north of town before him was a white road and at his back an apple orchard in full bloom he took a drink out of the bottle and then lay down on the grass he thought of mornings and of how the stones in the gravel driveway by Banker White House were wet with dew and glistened in the morning light he thought of the nights in the barn when it rained and he lay away hearing the drumming of the raindrops and smelling the warm smell of horses and of hay then he thought of a storm that had gone roaring through Winesburg several days before and his mind going back he relived the night from the two of coming from Cincinnati sharply he remembered how strange it had seemed to sit quietly in the coach and to feel the power of the engine hurling the train along through the night Tom got drunk in a very short time he kept taking drinks from the bottle as the thoughts visited him and when his head began to reel he got up and walked along the road going away from Winesburg there was a bridge on the road that ran out of Winesburg north and the drunk boy made his way along the road to the bridge there he sat down he tried to drink again but when he had taken the cork out of the bottle he became ill and put it quickly back his head was rocking back and forth and so he sat on the stone approach to the bridge and side his head seemed to be flying about like a pinwheel and then projecting itself off into space and his arms and legs stopped helplessly about at 11 o'clock Tom got back into town George Willard found him wandering about and took him into the Eagle Prince Shop then he became afraid that the drunken boy would make a mess on the floor and helped him into the alleyway the reporter was confused by Tom Foster the drunken boy talked to Helen White and he said he had been with her on the shore of a sea and had made love to her George had seen Helen White walking in the street with his father during the evening and decided that Tom was out of his head a sentiment concerning Helen White that lurked at his own heart claimed up and he became angry now you quit that he said I won't let Helen White's name be dragged into this I won't let that happen he began shaking Tom's shoulder trying to make him understand you quit it he said again for three hours the two young men thus strangely thrown together stayed in the Prince Shop when he had a little recovered George took Tom for a walk they went into the country and sat on a log near the edge of a wood something in the still night drew them together and when the drunken boy's head began to clear they talked it was good to be drunk Tom Foster said it taught me something I won't have to do it again I will think more dearly after this George Willard did not see but his anger concerning Helen White passed and he felt drawn for the pale shaken boy as he had never before been drawn toward anyone with motherly solicitude he insisted that Tom get to his feet and walk about again they went back to the Prince Shop and sat in silence in the darkness the reporter could not get the purpose of Tom Foster's actions straightened out in his mind when Tom spoke again of Helen White he grew angry and began to scold you quit that he said sharply you haven't been with her what makes you say you have what makes you keep saying such things now you quit it do you hear Tom was hurt he couldn't quarrel with George Willard because he was incapable of quarrelling so he got up to go away when George Willard was insistent he put out his hand laying it on the older boy's arm and tried to explain he said softly I don't know how it was I was happy you see how that was Helen White made me happy and the night did too I wanted to suffer to be hurt somehow I thought that was what I should do I wanted to suffer you see because everyone suffers and does wrong I thought of a lot of things to do but they wouldn't work they all hurt someone else Tom Foster's voice arose and for once in his life it was like making love that's what I mean he explained don't you see how it is it hurt me to do what I did and made everything strange that's why I did it I'm glad too it taught me something that's it that's what I wanted don't you understand I wanted to learn things you see that's why I did it you see how it was in the Hefner Block above the Paris Dry Good Store, was but dimly lighted. At the head of the stairway hung a lamp with a dirty chimney that was fastened by a bracket to the wall. The lamp had a tin reflector, brown with rust, and covered with dust. The people who went up the stairway followed with their feet the feet of many who had gone before. The soft boards of the stairs had yielded under the pressure of feet, and deep hollows marked the way. At the top of the stairway a turn to the right brought you to the doctor's door. To the left was a dark hallway filled with rubbish. Old chairs, carpenter's horses, stepladders, and empty boxes lay in the darkness waiting for shins to be barked. The pile of rubbish belonged to the Paris Dry Goods Company. When a counter or a row of shelves in the store became useless, clerks carried it up the stairway and threw it on the pile. Doctor Reefy's office was as large as a barn, a stove with a round porch sat in the middle of the room. Around its base was piled sawdust, held in place by heavy planks nailed to the floor. By the door stood a huge table that had once been a part of the furniture of Herrick's clothing store, and that had been used for displaying custom-made clothes. It was covered with books, bottles, and surgical instruments. Near the edge of the table lay three or four apples left by John Spaniard, a tree-nurseryman who was Doctor Reefy's friend, and who had slipped the apples out of his pocket as he came in at the door. At middle age Doctor Reefy was tall and awkward. The gray beard he laid at war had not yet appeared, but on the upper lip grew a brown moustache. He was not a graceful man, as when he grew older, and was much occupied with the problem of disposing of his hands and feet. On summer afternoons, when she had been married many years, and when her son George was a boy of twelve or fourteen, Elizabeth Willard sometimes went up the worn steps to Doctor Reefy's office. Already the woman's naturally tall figure had begun to droop and to drag itself listlessly about. Estensibly she went to see the Doctor because of her health, but on the half-dozen occasions when she had been to see him the outcome of the visits did not primarily concern her health. She and the Doctor talked of that, but they talked most of her life, of their two lives, and of the ideas that had come to them as they lived their lives in Winesburg. In the big empty office the man and the woman sat looking at each other and they were a good deal alike. Their bodies were different, as were also the colour of their eyes, the length of their noses, and the circumstances of their existence. But something inside them meant the same thing, wanted the same release, would have left the same impression on the memory of an onlooker. Later, and when he grew older and married a young wife, the Doctor often talked to her of the hours spent with a sick woman and expressed a good many things he had been unable to express to Elizabeth. He was almost a poet in his old age, and his notion of what happened took a poetic turn. I had come to the time in my life when prayer became necessary, and so I invented gods and prayed to them, he said. I did not say my prayers in words, nor did I kneel down, but sat perfectly still in my chair. In the late afternoon, when it was hot and quiet on Main Street, or in the winter, when the days were gloomy, the gods came into the office, and I thought no one knew about them. Then I found that this woman, Elizabeth, knew that she worshipped also the same gods. I have a notion that she came to the office because she thought the gods would be there, but she was happy to find herself not alone just the same. It was an experience that cannot be explained, although I suppose it is always happening to men and women in all sorts of places. On the summer afternoons, when Elizabeth and the Doctor sat in the office and talked of their two lives, they talked of other lives also. Sometimes the Doctor made philosophic epigrams, then he chuckled with amusement. Now and then, after a period of silence, a word was said, or a hint given, that strangely illuminated the life of the speaker. A wish became a desire, or a dream half-dead flared suddenly into life. For the most part, the words came from the woman, and she said them without looking at the man. Each time she came to see the Doctor, the hotelkeeper's wife talked a little more freely, and after an hour or two in his presence went down the stairway into Main Street, feeling renewed and strengthened against the dullness of her days. With something approaching a girlhood swing to her body she walked along. But when she had got back to her chair by the window of her room, and when darkness had come on, and a girl from the hotel dining-room bought her dinner on a tray, she let it grow cold. Her thoughts ran away to her girlhood, with its passionate longing for adventure, and she remembered the arms of men that had held her when adventure was a possible thing for her. Particularly, she remembered one who had for a time been her lover, and who in the moment of his passion had cried out to her more than a hundred times, saying the same words madly over and over. You dear! You dear! You lovely dear! The words, she thought, expressed something she would have liked to have achieved in life. In her room, in the shabby old hotel, the sick wife of the hotel-keeper began to weep, and putting her hands to her face, rocked back and forth. The words of her one friend, Dr. Reefy, rang in her ears. Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night, he had said. You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it, and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly, and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses. Elizabeth Willard could not remember her mother, who had died when she was but five years old. Her girlhood had been lived in the most haphazard manner imaginable. Her father was a man who had wanted to be let alone, and the affairs of the hotel would not let him alone. He also had lived and died a sick man. Every day he arose with a cheerful face, but by ten o'clock in the morning all the joy had gone out of his heart. When a guest complained of the fair in the hotel dining room, or one of the girls who made up the beds got married and went away, he stamped on the floor and swore. At night, when he went to bed, he thought of his daughter growing up among the stream of people that drifted in and out of the hotel, and was overcome with sadness. As the girl grew older, and began to walk out in the evening with when he wanted to talk to her, but when he tried was not successful. He always forgot what he wanted to say, and spent the time complaining of his own affairs. In her girlhood and young womanhood, Elizabeth had tried to be a real adventurer in life. At eighteen, life had so gripped her that she was no longer a virgin. But although she had had half a dozen lovers before she married Tom Willard, she had never entered upon an adventure prompted by desire alone. Like all the women in the world, she wanted a real lover. Always there was something she sought blindly, passionately, some hidden wonder in life. The tall, beautiful girl with the swinging stride, who had walked under the trees with men, was forever putting out her hand into the darkness and trying to get hold of some other hand. In all the babble of words that fell from the lips of the men with whom she had ventured, she was trying to find what would be for her the true word. Elizabeth had married Tom Willard, a clerk in her father's hotel, because he was at hand and wanted to marry at the time when the determination to marry came to her. For a while, like most young girls, she thought marriage would change the face of life. If there was in her mind a doubt of the outcome of the marriage with Tom, she brushed it aside. Her father was ill and near death at the time, and she was perplexed because of the meaningless outcome of an affair in which she had just been involved. Other girls of her age in Winesburg were marrying men she had always known, grocery clerks or young farmers. In the evening they walked in Main Street with their husbands, and when she passed they smiled happily. She began to think that the fact of marriage might be full of some hidden significance. Young wives with whom she talked spoke softly and shyly. It changes things to have a man of your own, they said. On the evening before her marriage the perplexed girl had a talk with her father. Later she wondered if the hours alone with the sick man had not led to her decision to marry. The father talked of his life and advised the daughter to avoid being led into another such muddle. He abused Tom Willard, and that led Elizabeth to come to the clerks' defence. The sick man became excited and tried to get out of bed. When she would not let him walk about he began to complain. I've never been let alone, he said. Although I've worked hard I've not made the hotel pay, even now I owe money at the bank. You'll find that out when I'm gone. The voice of the sick man became tense with earnestness. Being unable to arise he put out his hand and pulled the girl's head down beside his own. There's a way out, he whispered. Don't marry Tom Willard or anyone else here in Winesburg. There is eight hundred dollars in a tin box in my trunk. Take it and go away. Again the sick man's voice became quarrelous. You've got to promise, he declared. If you won't promise not to marry give me your word that you'll never tell Tom about the money. It is mine, and if I give it to you I've the right to make that demand. Hide it away. It is to make up to you for my failure as a father. Sometime it may prove to be a door, a great open door to you. Come now. I tell you I'm about to die. Give me your promise. In Dr. Reefy's office, Elizabeth, a tired, gaunt old woman at forty-one, sat in a chair by the stove and looked at the floor. By a small desk near the window sat the doctor. His hands played with a lead pencil that lay on the desk. Elizabeth talked of her life as a married woman. She became impersonal and forgot her husband only using him as a lay figure to give point to her tail. And then I was married and it did not turn out at all, she said bitterly. As soon as I had gone into it I began to be afraid. Perhaps I knew too much before, and then perhaps I found out too much during my first night with him. I don't remember. What a fool I was. When father gave me the money and tried to talk me out of the thought of marriage, I would not listen. I thought of what the girls who were married had said of it, and I wanted marriage also. It wasn't Tom I wanted, it was marriage. When father went to sleep I leaned out of the window and thought of the life I had led. I didn't want to be a bad woman. The town was full of stories about me. I even began to be afraid Tom would change his mind. The woman's voice began to quiver with excitement. To Dr. Reefy, who without realising what was happening had begun to love her, there came an odd illusion. He thought that as she talked the woman's body was changing, that she was becoming younger, straighter, stronger. When he could not shake off the illusion his mind gave it a professional twist. It is good for both her body and her mind this talking, he muttered. The woman began telling of an incident that had happened one afternoon, a few months after her marriage. Her voice became steadier. In the late afternoon I went for a drive alone, she said. I had a buggy and a little gray pony I kept in Moyer's livery. Tom was painting and repapering rooms in the hotel. He wanted money and I was trying to make up my mind to tell him about the eight hundred dollars father had given to me. I couldn't decide to do it. I didn't like him well enough. There was always paint on his hands and face during those days, and he smelled of paint. He was trying to fix up the old hotel and make it new and smart. The excited woman sat up very straight in her chair and made a quick girlish movement with her hand as she told of the drive alone on the spring afternoon. It was cloudy and a storm threatened, she said. Black clouds made the green of the trees and the grass stand out so that the colors hurt my eyes. I went out Trunnion Pike a mile or more and then turned into a side road. The little horse went quickly along up hill and down. I was impatient. Thoughts came and I wanted to get away from my thoughts. I began to beat the horse. The black clouds settled down and it began to rain. I wanted to go at terrible speed to drive on and on forever. I wanted to get out of town, out of my clothes, out of my marriage, out of my body, out of everything. I almost killed the horse making him run, and when he could not run any more I got out of the buggy and ran a foot into the darkness until I fell and hurt my side. I wanted to run away from everything, but I wanted to run towards something too. Don't you see, dear, how it was? Elizabeth sprang out of the chair and began to walk about in the office. She walked as Dr. Reefy thought he had never seen anyone walk before. To her whole body there was a swing, a rhythm that intoxicated him. When she came and knelt on the floor beside his chair he took her into his arms and began to kiss her passionately. I cried all the way home, she said, as she tried to continue the story of her wild ride but he did not listen. You dear, you lovely dear, oh you lovely dear," he muttered, and thought he held in his arms not the tired-out woman of forty-one, but a lovely and innocent girl who had been able by some miracle to project herself out of the husk of the body of the tired-out woman. Dr. Reefy did not see the woman he had held in his arms again until after her death. On the summer afternoon in the office, when he was on the point of becoming her lover, a half grotesque little incident brought his love-making quickly to an end. As the man and woman held each other tightly, heavy feet came tramping up the office stairs. The two sprang to their feet and stood, listening and trembling. The noise on the stairs was made by a clerk from the Paris Dry-Goods Company, with a loud bang he threw in empty box on a pile of rubbish in the hallway, and then went heavily down the stairs. Elizabeth followed him almost immediately. The thing that had come to life in her as she talked to her one friend died suddenly. She was hysterical, as was also Dr. Reefy, and did not want to continue the talk. Along the street she went, with the blood still singing in her body, but when she turned out of Main Street, and saw ahead the lights of the new Willard House, she began to tremble, and her knees shook so that for a moment she thought she would fall in the street. The sick woman spent the last few months of her life hungering for death. Along the road of death she went, seeking, hungering. She personified the figure of death and made him now a strong black-haired youth running over hills, now a stern, quiet man, marked and scarred by the business of living. In the darkness of her room she put out her hand, thrusting it from under the covers of her bed, and she thought that death, like a living thing, put out his hand to her. Be patient, lover, she whispered. Keep yourself young and beautiful, and be patient. On the evening when disease laid its heavy hand upon her, and defeated her plans for telling her son George of the eight hundred dollars hidden away, she got out of bed, and crept half across the room, pleading with death for another hour of life. Wait, dear, the boy, the boy, the boy, she pleaded, as she tried with all of her strength to fight off the arms of the lover she had wanted so earnestly. Elizabeth died one day in March, in New Year when her son George became eighteen, and the young man had but little sense of the meaning of her death. Only time could give him that. For a month he had seen her lying, white, and still, and speechless in her bed, and then one afternoon the doctor stopped him in the hallway and said a few words. The young man went into his own room and closed the door. He had a queer, empty feeling in the region of his stomach. For a moment he sat staring at the floor, and then jumping up went for a walk. Along the station platform he went, and around through resident streets, past the high school building, thinking almost entirely of his own affairs. The notion of death could not get hold of him, and he was in fact a little annoyed that his mother had died on that day. He had just received a note from Helen White, the daughter of the town banker, in answer to one from him. Tonight I could have gone to see her, and now it will have to be put off, he thought, half angrily. Elizabeth died on a Friday afternoon at three o'clock. It had been cold and rainy in the morning, but in the afternoon the sun came out. Before she died she lay paralysed for six days, unable to speak or move, and with only her mind and her eyes alive. For three of the six days she struggled, thinking of her boy, trying to say some few words in regard to his future, and in her eyes there was an appeal so touching that all who saw it kept the memory of the dying woman in their minds for years. Even Tom Willard, who had always half resented his wife, forgot his resentment, and the tears ran out of his eyes and lodged in his moustache. The moustache had begun to turn grey, and Tom coloured it with dye. There was oil in the preparation he used for the purpose, and the tears, catching in the moustache and being rushed away by his hand, formed a fine mist-like vapour. In his grief Tom Willard's face looked like the face of a little dog that has been out a long time in bitter weather. George came home along Main Street, dark, on the day of his mother's death, and after going to his own room to brush his hair and clothes, went along the hallway and into the room where the body lay. There was a candle on the dressing table by the door, and Dr Reefy sat in a chair by the bed. The doctor arose and started to go out. He put out his hand as though to greet the younger man, and then awkwardly drew it back again. The air of the room was heavy with the presence of the two self-conscious human beings, and the man hurried away. The dead woman's son sat down in a chair and looked at the floor. He again thought of his own affairs, and definitely decided he would make a change in his life, that he would leave Winesburg. I will go to some city. Perhaps I can get a job on some newspaper, he thought, and then his mind turned to the girl with whom he was to have spent this evening, and again he was half angry at the turn of events that had prevented his going to her. In the dimly lighted room with the dead woman, the young man began to have thoughts. His mind played with thoughts of life, as his mother's mind had played with thought of death. He closed his eyes, and imagined that the red, young lips of Helen White touched his own lips. His body trembled, and his hands shook. And then something happened. The boy sprang to his feet, and stood stiffly. He looked at the figure of the dead woman under the sheets, and shamed for his thoughts swept over him, so that he began to weep. A new notion came into his mind, and he turned and looked guiltily about, as though afraid he would be observed. George Willard became possessed of a madness to lift the sheet from the body of his mother, and look at her face. The thought that had come into his mind gripped him terribly. He became convinced that not his mother, but someone else lay in the bed before him. The conviction was so real that it was almost unbearable. The body under the sheets was long, and in death looked young and graceful. To the boy, held by some strange fancy, it was unspeakably lovely. The feeling that the body before him was alive, that in another moment a lovely woman would spring out of the bed and confront him, became so overpowering that he could not bear the suspense. Again and again he put out his hand. Once he touched, and half lifted the white sheet that covered her. But his courage failed, and he, like Dr. Reefy, turned and went out of the room. In the hallway outside the door he stopped and trembled, so that he had to put a hand against the wall to support himself. That's not my mother. That's not my mother in there, he whispered to himself, and again his body shook with fright and uncertainty. When Aunt Elizabeth Swift, who had come to watch over the body, came out of an adjoining room, he put his hand into hers, and began to sob, shaking his head from side to side, half blind with grief. My mother is dead, he said. And then, forgetting the woman, he turned and stared at the door, through which he had just come. The dear, the dear, oh, the lovely dear. The boy, urged by some impulse outside himself, muttered aloud. As for the eight hundred dollars the dead woman had kept hidden so long, and that was to give George Willard his start in a city. It lay in the tin box behind the plaster, by the foot of his mother's bed. Elizabeth had put it there a week after their marriage, breaking the plaster away with a stick. Then she got one of the workmen her husband was at that time employing about the hotel, to mend the wall. I jammed the corner of the bed against it, she had explained to her husband, unable at the moment to give up her dream of release. The release that, after all, came to her but twice in her life, in the moments when her lovers, death, and Dr. Reefy, held her in their arms. End of section 23 This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Val Grimm. Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson. Section 24 Sophistication It was early evening of a day in the late fall, and the Winesburg county fair had brought crowds of country people into town. The day had been clear, and the night came on warm and pleasant. On the Trunnion Pike, where the road after it left town stretched away between berry fields now covered with dry brown leaves, the dust from passing wagons arose in clouds. Children curled into little balls, slept on the straw scattered on wagon beds. Their hair was full of dust and their fingers black and sticky. The dust rolled away over the fields, and the departing sun set at a blaze with colors. In the main street of Winesburg, crowds filled the stores in the sidewalks. Night came on, horses winnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about, children became lost and cried lustily, and American town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself. Bushing his way through the crowds in Main Street, young George Willard concealed himself in the stairway leading to Dr. Reefy's office, and looked at the people. With feverish eyes he watched the faces drifting past under the store lights. Thoughts kept coming into his head, and he did not want to think. He stamped impatiently on the wooden steps, and looked sharply about. Well, is she going to stay with him all day? Have I done all this waiting for nothing? He muttered. George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast growing into manhood, and new thoughts had been coming into his mind. All that day, amid the jam of the people at the fair, he had gone about feeling lonely. He was about to leave Winesburg, to go away to some city where he hoped to get work on a city newspaper, and he felt grown up. The mood that had taken possession of him was a thing known to men, and unknown to boys. He felt old, and a little tired. Memories awoken him. To his mind, his new sense of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-tragic figure. He wanted someone to understand the feeling that had taken possession of him after his mother's death. There is a time in the life of every boy, when he, for the first time, takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future, and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happened. He stops under a tree, and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness. The voice is outside of himself, whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future, he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy, a door is torn open, and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing as though they marched in procession before him the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives, and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gas, he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows, he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers and looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another. If he prefers that that other be a woman, that is because he believes that a woman will be gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of all, understanding. When the moment of sophistication came to George Willard, his mind turned to Helen White, the Winesburg banker's daughter. Always he had been conscious of the girl growing into womanhood as he grew into manhood. Once on a summer night, when he was eighteen, he had walked with her on a country road and in her presence had given way to an impulse to boast, to make himself appear big and significant in her eyes. Now he wanted to see her for another purpose. He wanted to tell her of the new impulses that had come to him. He had tried to make her think of him as a man, when he knew nothing of manhood, and now he wanted to be with her and to try to make her feel the change he believed had taken place in his nature. As for Helen White, she also had come to a period of change. What George felt, she in her young woman's way, felt also. She was no longer a girl, and hungered to reach into the grace and beauty of womanhood. She had come home from Cleveland, where she was attending college, to spend a day at the fair. She also had begun to have memories. During the day, she sat in the grandstand with a young man, one of the instructors from the college, who was a guest of her mother's. The young man was of a pedantic turn of mind, and she felt at once that he would not do for her purpose. At the fair, she was glad to be seen in his company, as he was well dressed and a stranger. She knew that the fact of his presence would create an impression. During the day, she was happy, but when light came on, she began to grow restless. She wanted to drive the instructor away, to get out of his presence. While they sat together in the grandstand, and while the eyes of former schoolmates were upon them, she paid so much attention to her escort that he grew interested. A scholar needs money. I should marry a woman with money. He mused. Helen White was thinking of George Willard, even as he wandered gloomily through the crowds thinking of her. She remembered the summer evening when they had walked together, and wanted to walk with him again. She thought that the months she had spent in the city—the going to theaters and the seeing of great crowds, wandering and lighted thoroughfares—had changed her profoundly. She wanted him to feel and be conscious of the change in her nature. The summer evening together that had left its mark on the memory of both the young man and woman had, when looked at quite sensibly, been rather stupidly spent. They had walked out of town along a country road. Then they had stopped by a fence near a field of young corn, and George had taken off his coat and let it hang on his arm. Well, I've stayed here in Winesburg, yes. I've not yet gone away, but I'm growing up, he had said. I've been reading books, and I've been thinking. I'm going to try to amount to something in life. Well, he explained. That isn't the point. Perhaps I'd better quit talking. The confused boy put his hand on the girl's arm. His voice trembled. The two started to walk back along the road toward town. In his desperation, George boasted, I'm going to be a big man, the biggest that ever lived here in Winesburg, he declared. I want you to do something. I don't know what. Perhaps it is none of my business. I want you to try and be different from other women. You see the point. It's none of my business, I tell you. I want you to be a beautiful woman. You see what I want. The boys' voice failed, and in silence the two came back into town, and went along the street to Helen White's house. At the gate, he tried to say something impressive. Speeches he had thought out came into his head, but they seemed utterly pointless. I thought, I used to think, I had it in my mind, you would marry Seth Richmond. Now I know you won't. Was all he could find to say, as she went through the gate and toward the door of her house. On the warm fall evening, as he stood in the stairway and looked at the crowd drifting through Main Street, George thought of the talk beside the field of young corn, and was ashamed of the figure he had made of himself. In the street, the people surged up and down like cattle confined in a pen. Buggies and wagons almost filled the narrow thoroughfare. A band played, and small boys raced along the sidewalk, diving between the legs of men. Young men, with shining red faces, walked awkwardly about with girls on their arms. In a room above one of the stores, where a dance was to be held, the fiddlers tuned their instruments. The broken sounds floated down through an open window, and out across the murmur of voices, and the loud blare of the horns of the band. Med leave sounds got on young Willard's nerves. Everywhere, on all sides, the sense of crowding, moving life closed in about him. He wanted to run away by himself and think. If she wants to stay with that fellow, she may. Why should I care? What difference does it make to me? He growled, and went along Main Street, and threw her and's grocery into a side street. George felt so utterly lonely and dejected, that he wanted to weep, but pride made him walk rapidly along, swinging his arms. He came to Wesley Moyer's livery barn and stopped in the shadows to listen to a group of men who talked of a race Wesley Stallion, Tony Tip, had won at the fair during the afternoon. A crowd had gathered in front of the barn, and before the crowd walked Wesley, prancing up and down, boasting. He had held a whip in his hand, and kept tapping the ground. Little puffs of dust arose in the lamp light. Hell, quit your talking! Wesley exclaimed. I wasn't afraid. I knew I had him beat all the time. I wasn't afraid. Ordinarily George Willard would have been intensely interested in the boasting of Moyer, the horseman. Now it made him angry. He turned and hurried away along the street. Old windbag, he sputtered. Why does he want to be bragging? Why don't he shut up? George went into a vacant lot, and as he hurried along, fell over a pile of rubbish. A nail protruding from an empty barrel tore his trousers. He sat down on the ground and swore. With a pin, he mended the torn place, and then arose and went on. I'll go to Helen White's house. That's what I'll do. I'll walk right in. I'll say that I want to see her. I'll walk right in and sit down. That's what I'll do. He declared, climbing over a fence, and beginning to run. On the veranda of Banker White's house, Helen was restless and distraught. The instructor sat between the mother and daughter. His talk wearied the girl. Although he had also been raised in an Ohio town, the instructor began to put on the heirs of the city. He wanted to appear cosmopolitan. I like the chance you have given me to study the background out of which most of your girls come, he declared. It was good of you, Mrs. White, to have me down for the day. He turned to Helen and laughed. Your life is still bound up with the life of this town, he asked. There are people here in whom you are interested. To the girl his voice sounded pompous and heavy. Helen arose and went into the house. At the door leading to a garden at the back, she stopped and stood listening. Her mother began to talk. There is no one here fit to associate with the girl of Helen's breeding, she said. Helen ran down a flight of stairs at the back of the house and into the garden. In the darkness she stopped and stood trembling. It seemed to her that the world was full of meaningless people, saying words. A fire with eagerness, she ran through a garden gate and turning a corner by the baker's barn, went into a little side street. George, where are you George? she cried, filled with nervous excitement. She stopped running and leaned against a tree to laugh hysterically. Along the dark little street came George Willard, still saying words. I'm going to walk right into her house. I'll go right in and sit down. He declared as he came up to her. He stopped and stared stupidly. Come on, he said, and took a hold of her hand. With hanging heads they walked away along the street under the trees. Dry leaves rustled underfoot. Now that he had found her, George wondered what he had better do. And say, at the upper end of the fairground in Winesburg, there is a half-taked old grandstand. It has never been painted, and the boards are all warped out of shape. The fairground stands on top of a low hill rising out of the valley of Wine Creek, and from the grandstand one can see at night, over a cornfield, the lights of the town reflected against the sky. George and Helen climbed the hill to the fairground, coming by the path past Water Works Pond. The feeling of loneliness and isolation that had come to the young man in the crowded streets of his town was both broken and intensified by the presence of Helen. What he felt was reflected in her. In youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm, unthinking little animal struggles against the thing that reflects and remembers. And the older, the more sophisticated thing. That had possession of George Willard. Sensing his mood, Helen walked beside him filled with respect. When they got to the grandstand, they climbed up under the roof, and sat down on one of the long, bench-like seats. There is something memorable in the experience to be had by going into a fairground that stands at the edge of a middle western town, on a night after the annual fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people. Here, during the day just past, have come the people pouring in from the town and the country around. Farmers with their wives and children, and all the people from hundreds of little frame houses, have gathered within these board walls. Young girls have laughed, and men with beards have talked of the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled to overflowing with life. It is itched and squirmed with life. And now it is night, and the life has all gone away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree, and what there is of a reflective tendency in his nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life, while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely, that tears come to the eyes. In the darkness under the roof of the grandstand, George Willard sat beside hill and white, and felt very keenly his own insignificance in the scheme of existence. Now that he had come out of town, where the presence of the people stirring about, busy with a multitude of affairs, had been so irritating, the irritation was all gone. The presence of Helen renewed and refreshed him. It was as though her woman's hand was assisting him to make some minute readjustment of the machinery of his life. He began to think of the people in the town where he had always lived with something like reverence. He had reverence for Helen. He wanted to love and be loved by her, but he did not want, at the moment, to be confused by her womanhood. In the darkness he took hold of her hand, and when she crept close, put a hand on her shoulder. A wind began to blow, and he shivered. With all his strength he tried to hold and to understand the mood that had come upon him. And that high place in the darkness, the two oddly sensitive human atoms, held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. I have come to this lonely place, and there is this other. Was the substance of the thing felt. In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into the long night of the late fall. Farmhorses jogged away along lonely country roads, pulling their portion of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods in off the sidewalks, and lock the doors of stores. In the opera house a crowded gather to see a show, and further down Main Street the fiddlers, their instruments tuned, sweated in work to keep the feet of the youth flying over a dance floor. In the darkness in the grandstand, Helen White and George Willard remained silent. Now and then the spell that held them was broken, as they turned and tried in the dim light to see into each other's eyes. They kissed, but that impulse did not last. At the upper end of the fairground a half dozen men worked over horses that had raced during the afternoon. The men had built a fire, and were heating kettles of water. Only their legs could be seen as they passed back and forth in the light. When the wind blew the little flames of the fire danced crazily about. George and Helen arose and walked away into the darkness. They went along a path past a field of corn that had not yet been cut. The wind whispered among the dry corn blades. For a moment, during the walk back into town, the spell that held them was broken. When they had come to the crest of Water Works Hill, they stopped by a tree, and George again put his hands on the girl's shoulders. She embraced him eagerly, and again they drew quickly back from that impulse. They stopped kissing and stood a little apart. Mutual respect grew big in them. They were both embarrassed, and to relieve their embarrassment. Dropped into the animalism of youth, they laughed and began to pull and haul at each other, and some way chastened and purified by the mood they had been in. They became not man and woman, not boy and girl, but excited little animals. It was so they went down the hill. In the darkness they played like two splendid young things in a young world. Once, running swiftly forward, Helen tripped George and he fell. He squirmed and shouted. Shaking with laughter, he rolled down the hill. Helen ran after him. For just a moment, she stopped in the darkness. There was no way of knowing what woman's thoughts went through her mind. But, when the bottom of the hill was reached, and she came up to the boy, she took his arm and walked beside him in dignified silence. For some reason they could not have explained. They had both got from their silent evening together the thing needed. Man or boy? Woman or girl? They had for a moment taken hold of the thing that makes the mature life of men and women in the modern world possible. End of Section 24. Section 25 of Winesburg, Ohio. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Section 25, Departure. Young George Willard got out of bed at four in the morning. It was April, and the young tree leaves were just coming out of their buds. The trees along the residence streets in Winesburg are maple, and the seeds are winged. When the wind blows, they whirl crazily about, filling the air and making a carpet underfoot. George came downstairs into the hotel office carrying a brown leather bag. His trunk was packed for departure. Since two o'clock he had been awake, thinking of the journey he was about to take, and wondering what he would find at the end of the day. The boy who slept in the hotel office lay on a cot by the door. His mouth was open and he snored lustily. George crept past the cot, and went out into the silent, deserted main street. The East was pink with the dawn, and long streaks of light climbed into the sky where a few stars were still shown. Beyond the last house, Antonian Pyramid, the first to have been here, was a little bit confused by the name of the man. a few stars still shown. Beyond the last house on Trunnion Pike in Winesburg there is a great stretch of open fields. The fields are owned by farmers who live in town and drive homeward at evening, along Trunnion Pike in light, creaking wagons. In the fields are planted berries and small fruits. In the late afternoon and the hot summers when the road and the fields are covered with dust, a smoky haze lies over the great flat basin of land. To look across it is like looking out across the sea. In the spring when the land is green the effect is somewhat different. The land becomes a wide green billiard table on which tiny human insects toil up and down. All through his boyhood and young manhood George Willard had been in the habit of walking on Trunnion Pike. He had been in the midst of the great open place on winter nights when it was covered with snow and only the moon looked down at him. He had been there in the fall when bleak winds blew and on summer evenings when the air vibrated with the song of insects. On the April morning he wanted to go there again, to walk again in the silence. He did walk to where the road dipped down by a little stream, two miles from town, and then turned and walked silently back again. When he got to Main Street clerks were sweeping the sidewalks before the stores. A. U. George. How does it feel to be going away? They asked. The westbound train leaves Winesburg at 7.45 in the morning. Tom Little is the conductor. His train runs from Cleveland to where it connects with a great trunk line railroad with terminals in Chicago and New York. Tom has what in railroad circles is called an easy run. Every evening he returns to his family. In the fall and spring he spends his Sunday's fishing in Lake Erie. He has a round face and small blue eyes. He knows the people in the towns along his railroad better than a city man knows the people who live in his apartment building. George came down the little incline from the new Willard House at 7 o'clock. Tom Willard carried his bag. The son had become taller than the father. On the station platform everyone shook the young man's hand more than a dozen people waited about. Then they talked of their own affairs. Even Will Henderson, who was lazy and often slept until nine, had got out of bed. George was embarrassed. Gertrude Wilma, a tall, thin woman of fifty who worked in the Winesburg Post Office, came along the station platform. She had never before paid any attention to George. Now she stopped and put out her hand. In two words she voiced what everyone felt. Good luck, she said sharply, and then turning went on her way. When the train came into the station, George felt relieved. He scampered hurriedly aboard. Helen White came running along Main Street, hoping to have a parting word with him, but he had found a seat and did not see her. When the train started, Tom Little punched his ticket, grinned, and, although he knew George well and knew on what adventure he was just setting out, made no comment. Tom had seen a thousand George Willards go out of their towns to the city. It was a commonplace enough incident with him. In the smoking car there was a man who had just invited Tom to go on a fishing trip to Sandusky Bay. He wanted to accept the invitation and talk over the details. George glanced up and down the car to be sure no one was looking, then took out his pocketbook and counted his money. His mind was occupied with the desire not to appear green. Almost the last words his father had said to him concerned the matter of his behavior when he got to the city. Be a sharp one, Tom Willard had said. Keep your eyes on your money. Be awake. That's the ticket. Don't let anyone think you're a greenhorn. After George counted his money he looked out of the window and was surprised to see that the train was still in Winesburg. The young man, going out of his town to meet the adventure of life, began to think, but he did not think of anything very big or dramatic. Things like his mother's death, his departure from Winesburg, the uncertainty of his future life in the city, the serious and larger aspects of his life did not come into his mind. He thought of little things, turks mullet, wheeling boards through the main street of his town in the morning. A tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once stayed overnight at his father's hotel. Butch Wheeler, the lamp-lighter of Winesburg, hurrying through the streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his hand. Helen White, standing by a window in the Winesburg Post Office and putting a stamp on an envelope. The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a long time, and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared, and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.