Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories

  So there I stood looking, and as sick as a dog inside myself, and as wet and cold as a rat in a sewer pipe. I could see the mass of dark figures moving about down below, and beyond the main street there was a river that made a sound you could hear distinctly, even up where I was, and over beyond the river were some railroad tracks with switch engines going up and down. I suppose they had something to do with the mines in which the men of the town worked. Anyway, as I stood watching and listening there was, now and then, a sound like thunder rolling down the sky, and I suppose that was a lot of coal, maybe a whole carload, being let down plunk into a coal car.

  And then besides there was, on the side of a hill far away, a long row of coke ovens. They had little doors, through which the light from the fire within leaked out and as they were set closely, side by side, they looked like the teeth of some big man-eating giant lying and waiting over there in the hills.

  The sight of it all, even the sight of the kind of hellholes men are satisfied to go on living in, gave me the fantods and the shivers right down in my liver, and on that night I guess I had in me a kind of contempt for all men, including myself, that I’ve never had so thoroughly since. Come right down to it, I suppose women aren’t so much to blame as men. They aren’t running the show.

  * * *

  Then I pushed open the door and went into the saloon. There were about a dozen men, miners I suppose, playing cards at tables in a little long dirty room, with a bar at one side of it, and with a big red-faced man with a mustache standing back of the bar.

  The place smelled, as such places do where men hang around who have worked and sweated in their clothes and perhaps slept in them too, and have never had them washed but have just kept on wearing them. I guess you know what I mean if you’ve ever been in a city. You smell that smell in a city, in street cars on rainy nights when a lot of factory hands get on. I got pretty used to that smell when I was a tramp and pretty sick of it too.

  And so I was in the place now, with a glass of whisky in my hand, and I thought all the miners were staring at me, which they weren’t at all, but I thought they were and so I felt just the same as though they had been. And then I looked up and saw my own face in the old cracked looking-glass back of the bar. If the miners had been staring, or laughing at me, I wouldn’t have wondered when I saw what I looked like.

  It—I mean my own face—was white and pasty-looking, and for some reason, I can’t tell exactly why, it wasn’t my own face at all. It’s a funny business I’m trying to tell you about and I know what you may be thinking of me as well as you do, so you needn’t suppose I’m innocent or ashamed. I’m only wondering. I’ve thought about it a lot since and I can’t make it out. I know I was never that way before that night and I know I’ve never been that way since. Maybe it was lonesomeness, just lonesomeness, gone on in me too long. I’ve often wondered if women generally are lonesomer than men.

  The point is that the face I saw in the looking-glass back of that bar, when I looked up from my glass of whisky that evening, wasn’t my own face at all but the face of a woman. It was a girl’s face, that’s what I mean. That’s what it was. It was a girl’s face, and a lonesome and scared girl too. She was just a kid at that.

  When I saw that the glass of whisky came pretty near falling out of my hand but I gulped it down, put a dollar on the bar, and called for another. “I’ve got to be careful here—I’m up against something new,” I said to myself. “If any of these men in here get on to me there’s going to be trouble.” When I had got the second drink in me I called for a third and I thought, “When I get this third drink down I’ll get out of here and back up the hill to the fair ground before I make a fool of myself and begin to get drunk.”

  And then, while I was thinking and drinking my third glass of whisky, the men in the room began to laugh and of course I thought they were laughing at me. But they weren’t. No one in the place had really paid any attention to me.

  What they were laughing at was a man who had just come in at the door. I’d never seen such a fellow. He was a huge big man, with red hair, that stuck straight up like bristles out of his head, and he had a red-haired kid in his arms. The kid was just like himself, big, I mean, for his age, and with the same kind of stiff red hair.

  He came and set the kid up on the bar, close beside me, and called for a glass of whisky for himself and all the men in the room began to shout and laugh at him and his kid. Only they didn’t shout and laugh when he was looking, so he could tell which ones did it, but did all their shouting and laughing when his head was turned the other way. They kept calling him “cracked.” “The crack is getting wider in the old tin pan,” someone sang and then they all laughed.

  I’m puzzled you see, just how to make you feel as I felt that night. I suppose, having undertaken to write this story, that’s what I’m up against, trying to do that. I’m not claiming to be able to inform you or to do you any good. I’m just trying to make you understand some things about me, as I would like to understand some things about you, or anyone, if I had the chance. Anyway the whole blamed thing, the thing that went on I mean in that little saloon on that rainy Saturday night, wasn’t like anything quite real. I’ve already told you how I had looked into the glass back of the bar and had seen there, not my own face but the face of a scared young girl. Well, the men, the miners, sitting at the tables in the half dark room, the redfaced bartender, the unholy looking big man who had come in and his queer-looking kid, now sitting on the bar—all of them were like characters in some play, not like real people at all.

  There was myself, that wasn’t myself—and I’m not any fairy. Anyone who has ever known me knows better than that.

  And then there was the man who had come in. There was a feeling came out of him that wasn’t like the feeling you get from a man at all. It was more like the feeling you get maybe from a horse, only his eyes weren’t like a horse’s eyes. Horses’ eyes have a kind of calm something in them and his hadn’t. If you’ve ever carried a lantern through a wood at night, going along a path, and then suddenly you felt something funny in the air and stopped, and there ahead of you somewhere were the eyes of some little animal, gleaming out at you from a dead wall of darkness—The eyes shine big and quiet but there is a point right in the centre of each, where there is something dancing and wavering. You aren’t afraid the little animal will jump at you, you are afraid the little eyes will jump at you—that’s what’s the matter with you.

  Only of course a horse, when you go into his stall at night, or a little animal you had disturbed in a wood that way, wouldn’t be talking and the big man who had come in there with his kid was talking. He kept talking all the time, saying something under his breath, as they say, and I could only understand now and then a few words. It was his talking made him kind of terrible. His eyes said one thing and his lips another. They didn’t seem to get together, as though they belonged to the same person.

  For one thing the man was too big. There was about him an unnatural bigness. It was in his hands, his arms, his shoulders, his body, his head, a bigness like you might see in trees and bushes in a tropical country perhaps. I’ve never been in a tropical country but I’ve seen pictures. Only his eyes were small. In his big head they looked like the eyes of a bird. And I remember that his lips were thick, like negroes’ lips.

  He paid no attention to me or to the others in the room but kept on muttering to himself, or to the kid sitting on the bar—I couldn’t tell to which.

  First he had one drink and then, quick, another. I stood staring at him and thinking—a jumble of thoughts, I suppose.

  What I must have been thinking was something like this. “Well he’s one of the kind you are always seeing about towns,” I thought. I meant he was one of the cracked kind. In almost any small town you go to you will find one, and sometimes two or three cracked people, walking around. They go through the street, muttering to themselves and people generally are cruel to them. Their own folks make a bluff at being kind, but they are
n’t really, and the others in the town, men and boys, like to tease them. They send such a fellow, the mild silly kind, on some fool errand after a round square or a dozen post-holes or tie cards on his back saying “Kick me,” or something like that, and then carry on and laugh as though they had done something funny.

  And so there was this cracked one in that saloon and I could see the men in there wanted to have some fun putting up some kind of horseplay on him, but they didn’t quite dare. He wasn’t one of the mild kind, that was a cinch. I kept looking at the man and at his kid, and then up at that strange unreal reflection of myself in the cracked looking-glass back of the bar. “Rats, rats, digging in the ground—miners are rats, little jack-rabbit,” I heard him say to his solemn-faced kid. I guess, after all, maybe he wasn’t so cracked.

  The kid sitting on the bar kept blinking at his father, like an owl caught out in the daylight, and now the father was having another glass of whisky. He drank six glasses, one right after the other, and it was cheap ten-cent stuff. He must have had cast-iron insides all right.

  Of the men in the room there were two or three (maybe they were really more scared than the others so had to put up a bluff of bravery by showing off) who kept laughing and making funny cracks about the big man and his kid and there was one fellow was the worst of the bunch. I’ll never forget that fellow because of his looks and what happened to him afterwards.

  He was one of the showing-off kind all right, and he was the one that had started the song about the crack getting bigger in the old tin pan. He sang it two or three times, and then he grew bolder and got up and began walking up and down the room singing it over and over. He was a showy kind of man with a fancy vest, on which there were brown tobacco spots, and he wore glasses. Every time he made some crack he thought was funny, he winked at the others as though to say, “You see me. I’m not afraid of this big fellow,” and then the others laughed.

  The proprietor of the place must have known what was going on, and the danger in it, because he kept leaning over the bar and saying, “Shush, now quit it,” to the showy-off man, but it didn’t do any good. The fellow kept prancing like a turkey-cock and he put his hat on one side of his head and stopped right back of the big man and sang that song about the crack in the old tin pan. He was one of the kind you can’t shush until they get their blocks knocked off, and it didn’t take him long to come to it that time anyhow.

  Because the big fellow just kept on muttering to his kid and drinking his whisky, as though he hadn’t heard anything, and then suddenly he turned and his big hand flashed out and he grabbed, not the fellow who had been showing off, but me. With just a sweep of his arm he brought me up against his big body. Then he shoved me over with my breast jammed against the bar and looking right into his kid’s face and he said, “Now you watch him, and if you let him fall I’ll kill you,” in just quiet ordinary tones as though he was saying “good morning” to some neighbor.

  Then the kid leaned over and threw his arms around my head, and in spite of that I did manage to screw my head around enough to see what happened.

  It was a sight I’ll never forget. The big fellow had whirled around, and he had the showy-off man by the shoulder now, and the fellow’s face was a sight. The big man must have had some reputation as a bad man in the town, even though he was cracked for the man with the fancy vest had his mouth open now, and his hat had fallen off his head, and he was silent and scared. Once, when I was a tramp, I saw a kid killed by a train. The kid was walking on the rail and showing off before some other kids, by letting them see how close he could let an engine come to him before he got out of the way. And the engine was whistling and a woman, over on the porch of a house nearby, was jumping up and down and screaming, and the kid let the engine get nearer and nearer, wanting more and more to show off, and then he stumbled and fell. God, I’ll never forget the look on his face, in just the second before he got hit and killed, and now, there in that saloon, was the same terrible look on another face.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and was sick all through me and then, when I opened my eyes, the big man’s fist was just coming down in the other man’s face. The one blow knocked him cold and he fell down like a beast hit with an axe.

  And then the most terrible thing of all happened. The big man had on heavy boots, and he raised one of them and brought it down on the other man’s shoulder, as he lay white and groaning on the floor. I could hear the bones crunch and it made me so sick I could hardly stand up, but I had to stand up and hold on to that kid or I knew it would be my turn next.

  Because the big fellow didn’t seem excited or anything, but kept on muttering to himself as he had been doing when he was standing peacefully by the bar drinking his whisky, and now he had raised his foot again, and maybe this time he would bring it down in the other man’s face and, “just eliminate his map for keeps,” as sports and prize-fighters sometimes say. I trembled, like I was having a chill, but thank God at that moment the kid, who had his arms around me and one hand clinging to my nose, so that there were the marks of his fingernails on it the next morning, at that moment the kid, thank God, began to howl, and his father didn’t bother any more with the man on the floor but turned around, knocked me aside, and taking the kid in his arms tramped out of that place, muttering to himself as he had been doing ever since he came in.

  I went out too but I didn’t prance out with any dignity, I’ll tell you that. I slunk out like a thief or a coward, which perhaps I am, partly anyhow.

  And so there I was, outside there in the darkness, and it was as cold and wet and black and Godforsaken a night as any man ever saw. I was so sick at the thought of human beings that night I could have vomited to think of them at all. For a while I just stumbled along in the mud of the road, going up the hill, back to the fair ground, and then, almost before I knew where I was, I found myself in the stall with Pick-it-boy.

  That was one of the best and sweetest feelings I’ve ever had in my whole life, being in that warm stall alone with that horse that night. I had told the other swipes that I would go up and down the row of stalls now and then and have an eye on the other horses, but I had altogether forgotten my promise now. I went and stood with my back against the side of the stall, thinking how mean and low and all balled-up and twisted-up human beings can become, and how the best of them are likely to get that way any time, just because they are human beings and not simple and clear in their minds, and inside themselves, as animals are, maybe.

  Perhaps you know how a person feels at such a moment. There are things you think of, odd little things you had thought you had forgotten. Once, when you were a kid, you were with your father, and he was all dressed up, as for a funeral or Fourth of July, and was walking along a street holding your hand. And you were going past a railroad station, and there was a woman standing. She was a stranger in your town and was dressed as you had never seen a woman dressed before, and never thought you would see one, looking so nice. Long afterwards you knew that was because she had lovely taste in clothes, such as so few women have really, but then you thought she must be a queen. You had read about queens in fairy stories and the thoughts of them thrilled you. What lovely eyes the strange lady had and what beautiful rings she wore on her fingers.

  Then your father came out, from being in the railroad station, maybe to set his watch by the station clock, and took you by the hand and he and the woman smiled at each other, in an embarrassed kind of way, and you kept looking longingly back at her, and when you were out of her hearing you asked your father if she really were a queen. And it may be that your father was one who wasn’t so very hot on democracy and a free country and talked-up bunk about a free citizenry, and he said he hoped she was a queen, and maybe, for all he knew, she was.

  Or maybe, when you get jammed up as I was that night, and can’t get things clear about yourself or other people and why you are alive, or for that matter why anyone you can think about is alive, you think, not of people at all but of other things you have
seen and felt—like walking along a road in the snow in the winter, perhaps out in Iowa, and hearing soft warm sounds in a barn close to the road, or of another time when you were on a hill and the sun was going down and the sky suddenly became a great soft-colored bowl, all glowing like a jewel-handled bowl, a great queen in some far away mighty kingdom might have put on a vast table out under the tree, once a year, when she invited all her loyal and loving subjects to come and dine with her.

  I can’t, of course, figure out what you try to think about when you are as desolate as I was that night. Maybe you are like me and inclined to think of women, and maybe you are like a man I met once, on the road, who told me that when he was up against it he never thought of anything but grub and a big nice clean warm bed to sleep in. “I don’t care about anything else and I don’t ever let myself think of anything else,” he said. “If I was like you and went to thinking about women sometime I’d find myself hooked up to some skirt, and she’d have the old double cross on me, and the rest of my life maybe I’d be working in some factory for her and her kids.”

  As I say, there I was anyway, up there alone with that horse in that warm stall in that dark lonesome fair ground and I had that feeling about being sick at the thought of human beings and what they could be like.

  Well, suddenly I got again the queer feeling I’d had about him once or twice before, I mean the feeling about our understanding each other in some way I can’t explain.

  So having it again I went over to where he stood and began running my hands all over his body, just because I loved the feel of him and as sometimes, to tell the plain truth, I’ve felt about touching with my hands the body of a woman I’ve seen and who I thought was lovely too. I ran my hands over his head and neck and then down over his hard firm round body and then over his flanks and down his legs. His flanks quivered a little I remember and once he turned his head and stuck his cold nose down along my neck and nipped my shoulder a little, in a soft playful way. It hurt a little but I didn’t care.