Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories

  What . . . you mean . . . from a man?

  Well, yes. If Gil was a man.

  That, to Frank, was the sudden hurtful thing that night he dined with the three men. It shocked and hurt him . . . that hungry waiting thing in Gil’s eyes. There must have been something that gave Frank away, a shadow passing across his face. Something within him drew away and then, in a flash, he got it all. Once Little Gil had been ill at home and Frank went with Bud to see him. He remembered two sisters and an old mother. The mother was a gentle quiet white-haired old woman. In that family the father was dead and they all dependent on Little Gil. Sometimes you have moments of looking into the future. You are in the dark—in the dark tunnel of life, as it were—and you look ahead and see what is going to happen as you look along a tunnel to the opening at the far end. Gil was in business and dependent on men like Al, now sitting and talking to Bud. Suddenly Frank heard a conversation going on between Al and some other man, like Al, say five or ten years ahead.

  “D’you remember that Little Gil who used to be at Griver-Wharton’s?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Well, at Detroit . . . in a hotel lobby. The man knocked him down and he got thrown out of the hotel.”

  “Of course he lost his job?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where the hell’s he now?”

  “How should I know? Say, I never could stand one of those guys. Once one of them spoke to me. I knocked hell out of him.”

  That sort of thing hadn’t happened often to Frank and it gave him a queer feeling. Gil’s hands and lips were trembling and he was blushing like a young girl. He looked quickly away, but Frank saw something. Terror came into Gil’s eyes as he looked away. Al and Bud kept on talking. “Who was it took Christ down from the cross?” Frank thought. “I remember about their nailing him up. Who was it took him down? Oh, I remember now. It was Joseph, the rich young man.”

  * * *

  Frank Blandin in the rain walking and walking . . . alone, after the dinner with the three men. He left them at the door of Skully’s and they went back to the office of Griver-Wharton. The rain was cold. Frank didn’t have a date and didn’t feel like reading. He decided to walk home. He lived far out on the South Side. He walked. . . .

  Through nigger streets. . . .

  White streets. . . .

  Swell streets. . . .

  Poor streets. . . .

  He passed street-car barns. He thought of something. “Remember those guys they called the street-car bandits. I wish someone would try to hold me up here, in this dark street. I’d like to punch someone.”

  Gil would be at work at the office of Griver-Wharton. When Frank had left the others at the door of Skully’s, Gil had shrunk away. Now he would always be a little afraid of Frank. He’d be at work now, trying to think up ideas for advertisements for women’s shoes. Bud would be there, making quick drawings.

  Al would be waiting around. He might go out to a show. “Gil, don’t you want another shot out of my flask?”

  “No, thanks, Al.”

  “Those ideas you’re getting are O.K. Go ahead.” Bud was drinking too much. He got spiffed almost every night. If a guy like that wants to paint, why don’t he just go ahead? Suppose he starves? What of it? You get to thinking about someone, like Bud or Little Gil, and it’s like reading some queer book. You get to thinking about a city, like Chicago, or an advertising agency, or the members of a church, it’s like a book . . . like fiction written by some crazy man.

  Gil might be in his office, alone now for a moment. “Did I give myself away to him?” He knows he did. “I’ve tried. I’ve tried. I can’t help it if I’m this way.

  “I get so tired trying.”

  He’d put his little girlish face down in his little hands and cry a little. Frank walking in the rain. “Go on and cry, little thing. It’ll do you good.

  “But, they’ll get you. They’ll get you.

  “They’ll get onto you.

  “They’ll find out.

  “They’ll find out.”

  When Frank got home, pretty wet and tired, he mixed himself a shot. Then he took a hot bath. Gee, I got to find something to read. I got to get my mind off all this. . . . He found a new book beside his bed. Rackets and swindles. And the wiser birds, the bankers. . . . It was no use. He turned off the light. “There’s Little Gil,” he thought, again. “What about him? . . . Jesus, I better be thinking about something else.”

  Mr. Joe’s Doctor

  * * *

  WHEN Mr. Joe first came down into our country we were all a little afraid of him. Some of us had read about him in the newspapers, his adventures, divorces, etc. Evidently he wanted to find a quiet place. He went out from town a few miles, and bought a farm. It was in the hills. When he built his house the workmen, some from town, others country fellows, all liked him.

  You couldn’t help liking him. He was so unpretentious. If I were to put down here his real name . . . a man like that . . . successful plays on Broadway . . . married to first this and then that successful actress . . . the marriages breaking up . . . anyway, there he was, a man you’d like.

  He was a quiet man, walking around, never thrusting himself forward. He was always wanting to pay his workmen a little more than they asked.

  It was Doctor Haggerty who took me to Mr. Joe’s. Our country doctor is something rather special. He is a shy man, a bachelor who has been practicing in this one section since he came out of medical school. It is a section of poor farms and poor little towns. How the doctor has managed to live on us I don’t know. It doesn’t cost much to keep such a man going. Although he does all kinds of difficult and dangerous operations . . . in cabins in winter on lonely mountain roads . . . very likely the patient snowed in . . . and treats every kind of disease; he has nothing but his small, worn medicine case and the few surgeon’s tools he must have had when he started his practice.

  The doctor, a small, bald-headed man, with a little turned-up nose and quick, alive hands, has one passion. He loves to play croquet, and used to play every afternoon with old Judge Graves, also a bachelor. Then Judge Graves died, and Mr. Joe came in here, bought his mountain farm out on Swift Creek, and built his house.

  Mr. Joe must have taken a fancy at once to Doctor Haggerty. Being a New Yorker, he couldn’t have had a passion for croquet. But the croquet ground he built cost a lot. A hill was cut down, sod was brought in, and men worked for days, watering and rolling. It was as though every blade of grass had been touched by some man’s hand. We all talked about it in the drug store in town. “Say, it must be nice to be rich, be the author of successful plays, have money rolling in like that.” The cashier of the bank told me about it. “The money comes in gobs,” he said.

  It was something for our Doctor Haggerty, the little shy one. There were the two shy men, he and Mr. Joe, together almost every afternoon that summer . . . that is to say, when the little doctor wasn’t racing over the hills in his shabby, wornout car, doing his operations sometimes—often, I dare say, up all night. It didn’t matter how busy he was, some time during the day or night he would be at Mr. Joe’s.

  Sometimes they played their game at night. Mr. Joe had built a high stone wall, shutting the croquet ground off from the road. He had put up electric lights. Harry Thompson, a farmer who lives out that way, told me that he got curious and went over there two or three times at night to sit around and watch, but that, when he did it, the game broke up. Mr. Joe went into his house and to his typewriter, and our doctor got into his old car and drove away.

  I was glad they didn’t mind me, sitting and watching. They were like two kids at their game. Our little doctor is past sixty, but when he played with Mr. Joe he became a kid. The two men had something going on between them, a laughing kind of thing. You see it sometimes between married couples that really make a go of marriage.

  * * *

  But here is the point to my story: Last summer a famous surgeon from New York came to visit Mr. Joe. It is all a little
odd. Our own people are just people to us. Who would think of Doctor Haggerty, living right here with us all these years, dressing rather shabbily, driving his rickety car, as anything special?

  The city surgeon who came here to visit Mr. Joe had a big foreign car and he had style. You could tell, looking at him a mile away, that he was a successful man. He had the air. It was in his clothes, in his walk.

  And he also took at once to our little doctor. I was out there when the city surgeon came. He planned to stay only the day, but at once he and Doctor Haggerty began to talk . . . our little doctor not at all shy before him, and pretty soon they drove off together, not in the big foreign car, but in Doc Haggerty’s little shabby one.

  They went up to look at a case our doctor had begun talking about, a Mrs. Friedman. She is a poor woman, a widow who lives with her son in a cabin on a poor farm back up in the hills. The big car never could have got up there. They were gone all afternoon and went again the next day.

  And when you come to that, who would think that anything wrong with a woman like Mrs. Friedman would be of special interest to a big, successful city surgeon? It seems it was a matter of an operation. We haven’t any hospitals in our country. They performed an operation on her; that is to say, our Doctor Haggerty did, the city man watching.

  It was the city surgeon who told me about it. That was after he had been here four or five days. I was out at Mr. Joe’s, and Doctor Haggerty and Mr. Joe were at one of their games and the city doctor and I were sitting on a low stone wall and watching. I am writing about this whole matter because it was an eye-opener to me. I had been rather afraid of the swank city man myself but had got over it a little.

  He began to talk to me, speaking of our little country doctor, and there was a curious note of respect in his voice that puzzled me.

  “There’s a man,” he said, indicating with a movement of his head that he meant our funny little doc. At the moment Doc was down on his hands and knees sighting across at Mr. Joe’s ball. Then he spoke of something that puzzled me.

  “I might have been O. K. myself if I had been given his opportunities,” he said.

  Gee, life gets you woozy. The city man got reflective.

  “Do you know,” he said to me, “I think maybe the little cuss has got an inferiority complex. Isn’t it swell!” he said. “That may have saved him. He doesn’t think he’s anything special.

  “Say,” he said, “take a look. Look at his hands, so delicate, so alive.

  “Gee, he’s had a swell life,” he said.

  The city doc seemed to think that his own life, being what he was, having the kind of personality that would make success inevitable, was a pure waste. He amused me, that man did.

  “Here I am,” he said, “and what am I?” He sighed. “A fool specialist,” he said.

  He seemed to think he had pretty much wasted his life, being what he so evidently was, a successful big-city surgeon. I laughed. I didn’t know what to say.

  * * *

  And anyway, afterward, on that same evening, I drove back to town with our own little doc. I can smell his old car as I write, I can hear it rattle. Our own little doc was very humble that night.

  “I was ashamed,” he said.

  “About what?” I asked.

  As I said, he had performed the operation on Mrs. Friedman in the presence of the city surgeon. He was ashamed of his equipment for the job. He had wanted the city man to do the operation, but the city man wouldn’t. He had told our doc that he wanted to watch.

  “He had the nerve to tell me that his own diagnosis of Mrs. Friedman’s case was wrong and that mine was right,” Doctor Haggerty said. Evidently our little doc didn’t believe it. “I guess he was trying to let me down easy,” he said.

  “And about this Mrs. Friedman,” I asked; “did you operate? Was it a difficult case? Will she live?”

  “Yes,” he said. He had that curious doctor’s tone, as though the patient didn’t matter so much. I suppose it is inevitable. He was concerned with the other doctor. He looked at me with his funny little childlike eyes. “I was so ashamed before him,” he said.

  “You mean?” I asked. I was amused.

  “I mean I haven’t any equipment,” he said.

  The other doctor had spoken of him with such sincere admiration, even envy. “What that man can do with a pocket-knife!” he had said.

  “If I had only had the nerve, when I was younger,” our own doctor said, “I should have gone off to the city, been a specialist. I might have learned something, got an education.

  “I might have amounted to something, been something,” Doctor Haggerty said to me that day, driving his rickety old car along the road and regretting, just as had the city man, the opportunities he had missed in his life.

  The Corn Planting

  * * *

  THE farmers who come to our town to trade are a part of the town life. Saturday is the big day. Often the children come to the high school in town.

  It is so with Hatch Hutchenson. Although his farm, some three miles from town, is small, it is known as one of the best-kept and best-worked places in all our section. Hatch is a little, gnarled old figure of a man. His place is on the Scratch Gravel Road, and there are plenty of poorly kept places out that way. Hatch’s place stands out. The little frame house is always kept painted, the trees in his orchard are whitened with lime halfway up the trunks, the barn and the sheds are in repair, and his fields are always clean-looking.

  Hatch is almost seventy. He got rather a late start in life. His father, who owned the same farm, was a Civil War man and came home so badly wounded that, although he lived a long time after the war, he couldn’t work much. Hatch was the only son and stayed at home, working the place until his father died.

  Then, when he was nearing fifty, he married a school-teacher of forty, and they had a son.

  The school-teacher was a small one, like Hatch. After they married they both stuck close to the land. They seemed to fit into their farm life as certain people fit into the clothes they wear. I have noticed something about people who make a go of marriage. They grow more and more alike. They even grow to look alike.

  Their one son, Will Hutchenson, was a small but remarkably strong boy. He came to our high school in town and pitched on our town baseball team. He was a fellow always cheerful, bright, and alert and a great favorite with all of us.

  For one thing, he began as a young boy to make amusing little drawings. It was a talent. He made drawings of fish and pigs and cows, and they looked like people you knew. I never knew before that people could look so much like cows and horses and pigs and fish.

  * * *

  When he finished in the town high school Will Hutchenson went to Chicago, where his mother had a cousin living, and he became a student in the Art Institute out there. Another young fellow from our town was also in Chicago. He really went two years before Will did. His name is Hal Weyman and he was a student at the University of Chicago. After he graduated he came home and got a job as principal of our high school.

  Hal and Will Hutchenson hadn’t been close friends before, Hal being several years older than Will, but in Chicago they got together, spent a good many evenings together, went together to see plays, and, as Hal later told me, had a good many long talks.

  I got it from Hal that in Chicago, as at home here when he was a young boy, Will was immediately popular. He was good-looking, so the girls in the art school liked him, and he had a straightforwardness that made him popular with all the young fellows.

  Hal told me that Will was out to some party nearly every night, and right away he began to sell some of his amusing little drawings and to make money. The drawings were used in advertisements and he was well paid.

  He even began to send some money home. You see, after Hal came back here, he used to go quite often out to the Hutchenson place to see Will’s father and mother. He would walk or drive out there in the afternoon or on summer evenings and sit with them. The talk was always of Will.
/>
  Hal said it was touching how much the father and mother depended on their one son, how much they talked about him and dreamed of his future. They had never been people who went about much with the town folks or even with their neighbors. They were of the sort who work all the time, from early morning till late in the evening; and on moonlight nights, Hal said, and after the little old wife had got the supper, they often went out into the fields and worked again.

  You see, by this time old Hatch was nearing seventy and his wife would have been ten years younger. Hal said that whenever he went out to the farm they quit work and came to sit with him. They might be in one of the fields, working together, but when they saw him in the road they came running. They had got a letter from Will. He wrote every week.

  The little old mother would come running, following the father. “We got another letter, Mr. Weyman,” Hatch would cry. And then his wife, quite breathless, would say the same thing: “Mr. Weyman, we got a letter.”

  The letter would be brought out at once and read aloud. Hal said the letters were always delicious. Will larded them with little sketches. There were humorous drawings of people he had seen or been with, rivers of automobiles on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, a policeman at a street crossing, young stenographers hurrying into office buildings. Neither of the old people had ever been to a city and they were curious and eager. They wanted the drawings explained, and Hal said they were like two children wanting to know every little detail Hal could remember about their son’s life in the big city. He was always at them to come there on a visit, and they would spend hours talking of that.

  “Of course,” Hatch said, “we couldn’t go. How could we?” he said.

  He had been on that one little farm since he was a boy. When he was a young fellow his father was an invalid, and so Hatch had to run things. A farm, if you run it right, is very exacting. You have to fight weeds all the time. There are the farm animals to take care of.