She worked her way through college
Well-to-do
The Old Scholar
For THE EGG
Melville Stoner
For OUT OF NOWHERE INTO NOTHING
CONTENTS
THE DUMB MAN
I WANT TO KNOW WHY
SEEDS
THE OTHER WOMAN
THE EGG
UNLIGHTED LAMPS
SENILITY
THE MAN IN THE BROWN COAT
BROTHERS
THE DOOR OF THE TRAP
THE NEW ENGLANDER
WAR
MOTHERHOOD
OUT OF NOWHERE INTO NOTHING
THE MAN WITH THE TRUMPET
The Dumb Man
* * *
THERE is a story.—I cannot tell it.—I have no words.
The story is almost forgotten but sometimes I remember.
The story concerns three men in a house in a street.
If I could say the words I would sing the story.
I would whisper it into the ears of women, of mothers.
I would run through the streets saying it over and over.
My tongue would be torn loose—it would rattle against my teeth.
The three men are in a room in the house.
One is young and dandified.
He continually laughs.
There is a second man who has a long white beard.
He is consumed with doubt but occasionally his doubt leaves him and he sleeps.
A third man there is who has wicked eyes and who moves nervously about the room rubbing his hands together.
The three men are waiting—waiting.
Upstairs in the house there is a woman standing with her back to a wall, in half darkness by a window.
That is the foundation of my story and everything I will ever know is distilled in it.
I remember that a fourth man came to the house, a white silent man.
Everything was as silent as the sea at night.
His feet on the stone floor of the room where the three men were made no sound.
The man with the wicked eyes became like a boiling liquid—he ran back and forth like a caged animal.
The old grey man was infected by his nervousness—he kept pulling at his beard.
The fourth man, the white one, went upstairs to the woman.
There she was—waiting.
How silent the house was—how loudly all the clocks in the neighborhood ticked.
The woman upstairs craved love. That must have been the story. She hungered for love with her whole being. She wanted to create in love.
When the white silent man came into her presence she sprang forward.
Her lips were parted.
There was a smile on her lips.
The white one said nothing.
In his eyes there was no rebuke, no question.
His eyes were as impersonal as stars.
Down stairs the wicked one whined and ran back and forth like a little lost hungry dog.
The grey one tried to follow him about but presently grew tired and lay down on the floor to sleep.
He never awoke again.
The dandified fellow lay on the floor too.
He laughed and played with his tiny black mustache.
I have no words to tell what happened in my story.
I cannot tell the story.
The white silent one may have been Death.
The waiting eager woman may have been Life.
Both the old grey bearded man and the wicked one puzzle me.
I think and think but cannot understand them.
Most of the time however I do not think of them at all.
I keep thinking about the dandified man who laughed all through my story.
If I could understand him I could understand everything.
I could run through the world telling a wonderful story.
I would no longer be dumb.
Why was I not given words?
Why am I dumb?
I have a wonderful story to tell but know no way to tell it.
I Want to Know Why
* * *
WE got up at four in the morning, that first day in the east. On the evening before we had climbed off a freight train at the edge of town, and with the true instinct of Kentucky boys had found our way across town and to the race track and the stables at once. Then we knew we were all right. Hanley Turner right away found a nigger we knew. It was Bildad Johnson who in the winter works at Ed Becker’s livery barn in our home town, Beckersville. Bildad is a good cook as almost all our niggers are and of course he, like everyone in our part of Kentucky who is anyone at all, likes the horses. In the spring Bildad begins to scratch around. A nigger from our country can flatter and wheedle anyone into letting him do most anything he wants. Bildad wheedles the stable men and the trainers from the horse farms in our country around Lexington. The trainers come into town in the evening to stand around and talk and maybe get into a poker game. Bildad gets in with them. He is always doing little favors and telling about things to eat, chicken browned in a pan, and how is the best way to cook sweet potatoes and corn bread. It makes your mouth water to hear him.
When the racing season comes on and the horses go to the races and there is all the talk on the streets in the evenings about the new colts, and everyone says when they are going over to Lexington or to the spring meeting at Churchill Downs or to Latonia, and the horsemen that have been down to New Orleans or maybe at the winter meeting at Havana in Cuba come home to spend a week before they start out again, at such a time when everything talked about in Beckersville is just horses and nothing else and the outfits start out and horse racing is in every breath of air you breathe, Bildad shows up with a job as cook for some outfit. Often when I think about it, his always going all season to the races and working in the livery barn in the winter where horses are and where men like to come and talk about horses, I wish I was a nigger. It’s a foolish thing to say, but that’s the way I am about being around horses, just crazy. I can’t help it.
Well, I must tell you about what we did and let you in on what I’m talking about. Four of us boys from Beckersville, all whites and sons of men who live in Beckersville regular, made up our minds we were going to the races, not just to Lexington or Louisville, I don’t mean, but to the big eastern track we were always hearing our Beckersville men talk about, to Saratoga. We were all pretty young then. I was just turned fifteen and I was the oldest of the four. It was my scheme. I admit that and I talked the others into trying it. There was Hanley Turner and Henry Rieback and Tom Tumberton and myself. I had thirty-seven dollars I had earned during the winter working nights and Saturdays in Enoch Myer’s grocery. Henry Rieback had eleven dollars and the others, Hanley and Tom had only a dollar or two each. We fixed it all up and laid low until the Kentucky spring meetings were over and some of our men, the sportiest ones, the ones we envied the most, had cut out—then we cut out too.
I won’t tell you the trouble we had beating our way on freights and all. We went through Cleveland and Buffalo and other cities and saw Niagara Falls. We bought things there, souvenirs and spoons and cards and shells with pictures of the falls on them for our sisters and mothers, but thought we had better not send any of the things home. We didn’t want to put the folks on our trail and maybe be nabbed.
We got into Saratoga as I said at night and went to the track. Bildad fed us up. He showed us a place to sleep in hay over a shed and promised to keep still. Niggers are all right about things like that. They won’t squeal on you. Often a white man you might meet, when you had run away from home like that, might appear to be all right and give you a quarter or a half dollar or something, and then go right and give you away. White men will do that, but not a nigger. You can trust them. They are squarer with kids. I don’t know why.
At the Saratoga meeting that year there were a lot of men from home. Dave Williams and Arthur Mulford and Jerry Myers and others. Then there was a lo
t from Louisville and Lexington Henry Rieback knew but I didn’t. They were professional gamblers and Henry Rieback’s father is one too. He is what is called a sheet writer and goes away most of the year to tracks. In the winter when he is home in Beckersville he don’t stay there much but goes away to cities and deals faro. He is a nice man and generous, is always sending Henry presents, a bicycle and a gold watch and a boy scout suit of clothes and things like that.
My own father is a lawyer. He’s all right, but don’t make much money and can’t buy me things and anyway I’m getting so old now I don’t expect it. He never said nothing to me against Henry, but Hanley Turner and Tom Tumberton’s fathers did. They said to their boys that money so come by is no good and they didn’t want their boys brought up to hear gamblers’ talk and be thinking about such things and maybe embrace them.
That’s all right and I guess the men know what they are talking about, but I don’t see what it’s got to do with Henry or with horses either. That’s what I’m writing this story about. I’m puzzled. I’m getting to be a man and want to think straight and be O. K., and there’s something I saw at the race meeting at the eastern track I can’t figure out.
I can’t help it, I’m crazy about thoroughbred horses. I’ve always been that way. When I was ten years old and saw I was growing to be big and couldn’t be a rider I was so sorry I nearly died. Harry Hellinfinger in Beckersville, whose father is Postmaster, is grown up and too lazy to work, but likes to stand around in the street and get up jokes on boys like sending them to a hardware store for a gimlet to bore square holes and other jokes like that. He played one on me. He told me that if I would eat a half a cigar I would be stunted and not grow any more and maybe could be a rider. I did it. When father wasn’t looking I took a cigar out of his pocket and gagged it down some way. It made me awful sick and the doctor had to be sent for, and then it did no good. I kept right on growing. It was a joke. When I told what I had done and why most fathers would have whipped me but mine didn’t.
Well, I didn’t get stunted and didn’t die. It serves Harry Hellinfinger right. Then I made up my mind I would like to be a stable boy, but had to give that up too. Mostly niggers do that work and I knew father wouldn’t let me go into it. No use to ask him.
If you’ve never been crazy about thoroughbreds it’s because you’ve never been around where they are much and don’t know any better. They’re beautiful. There isn’t anything so lovely and clean and full of spunk and honest and everything as some race horses. On the big horse farms that are all around our town Beckersville there are tracks and the horses run in the early morning. More than a thousand times I’ve got out of bed before daylight and walked two or three miles to the tracks. Mother wouldn’t of let me go but father always says, “Let him alone,” so I got some bread out of the bread box and some butter and jam, gobbled it and lit out.
At the tracks you sit on the fence with men, whites and niggers, and they chew tobacco and talk, and then the colts are brought out. It’s early and the grass is covered with shiny dew and in another field a man is plowing and they are frying things in a shed where the track niggers sleep, and you know how a nigger can giggle and laugh and say things that make you laugh. A white man can’t do it and some niggers can’t but a track nigger can every time.
And so the colts are brought out and some are just galloped by stable boys, but almost every morning on a big track owned by a rich man who lives maybe in New York, there are always, nearly every morning, a few colts and some of the old race horses and geldings and mares that are cut loose.
It brings a lump up into my throat when a horse runs. I don’t mean all horses but some. I can pick them nearly every time. It’s in my blood like in the blood of race track niggers and trainers. Even when they just go slop-jogging along with a little nigger on their backs I can tell a winner. If my throat hurts and it’s hard for me to swallow, that’s him. He’ll run like Sam Hill when you let him out. If he don’t win every time it’ll be a wonder and because they’ve got him in a pocket behind another or he was pulled or got off bad at the post or something. If I wanted to be a gambler like Henry Rieback’s father I could get rich. I know I could and Henry says so too. All I would have to do is to wait ’til that hurt comes when I see a horse and then bet every cent. That’s what I would do if I wanted to be a gambler, but I don’t.
When you’re at the tracks in the morning—not the race tracks but the training tracks around Beckersville—you don’t see a horse, the kind I’ve been talking about, very often, but it’s nice anyway. Any thoroughbred, that is sired right and out of a good mare and trained by a man that knows how, can run. If he couldn’t what would he be there for and not pulling a plow?
Well, out of the stables they come and the boys are on their backs and it’s lovely to be there. You hunch down on top of the fence and itch inside you. Over in the sheds the niggers giggle and sing. Bacon is being fried and coffee made. Everything smells lovely. Nothing smells better than coffee and manure and horses and niggers and bacon frying and pipes being smoked out of doors on a morning like that. It just gets you, that’s what it does.
But about Saratoga. We was there six days and not a soul from home seen us and everything came off just as we wanted it to, fine weather and horses and races and all. We beat our way home and Bildad gave us a basket with fried chicken and bread and other eatables in, and I had eighteen dollars when we got back to Beckersville. Mother jawed and cried but Pop didn’t say much. I told everything we done except one thing. I did and saw that alone. That’s what I’m writing about. It got me upset. I think about it at night. Here it is.
At Saratoga we laid up nights in the hay in the shed Bildad had showed us and ate with the niggers early and at night when the race people had all gone away. The men from home stayed mostly in the grandstand and betting field, and didn’t come out around the places where the horses are kept except to the paddocks just before a race when the horses are saddled. At Saratoga they don’t have paddocks under an open shed as at Lexington and Churchill Downs and other tracks down in our country, but saddle the horses right out in an open place under trees on a lawn as smooth and nice as Banker Bohon’s front yard here in Beckersville. It’s lovely. The horses are sweaty and nervous and shine and the men come out and smoke cigars and look at them and the trainers are there and the owners, and your heart thumps so you can hardly breathe.
Then the bugle blows for post and the boys that ride come running out with their silk clothes on and you run to get a place by the fence with the niggers.
I always am wanting to be a trainer or owner, and at the risk of being seen and caught and sent home I went to the paddocks before every race. The other boys didn’t but I did.
We got to Saratoga on a Friday and on Wednesday the next week the big Mullford Handicap was to be run. Middlestride was in it and Sunstreak. The weather was fine and the track fast. I couldn’t sleep the night before.
What had happened was that both these horses are the kind it makes my throat hurt to see. Middlestride is long and looks awkward and is a gelding. He belongs to Joe Thompson, a little owner from home who only has a half dozen horses. The Mullford Handicap is for a mile and Middlestride can’t untrack fast. He goes away slow and is always way back at the half, then he begins to run and if the race is a mile and a quarter he’ll just eat up everything and get there.
Sunstreak is different. He is a stallion and nervous and belongs on the biggest farm we’ve got in our country, the Van Riddle place that belongs to Mr. Van Riddle of New York. Sunstreak is like a girl you think about sometimes but never see. He is hard all over and lovely too. When you look at his head you want to kiss him. He is trained by Jerry Tillford who knows me and has been good to me lots of times, lets me walk into a horse’s stall to look at him close and other things. There isn’t anything as sweet as that horse. He stands at the post quiet and not letting on, but he is just burning up inside. Then when the barrier goes up he is off like his name, Sunstreak. It makes you ac
he to see him. It hurts you. He just lays down and runs like a bird dog. There can’t anything I ever see run like him except Middlestride when he gets untracked and stretches himself.
Gee! I ached to see that race and those two horses run, ached and dreaded it too. I didn’t want to see either of our horses beaten. We had never sent a pair like that to the races before. Old men in Beckersville said so and the niggers said so. It was a fact.
Before the race I went over to the paddocks to see. I looked a last look at Middlestride, who isn’t such a much standing in a paddock that way, then I went to see Sunstreak.
It was his day. I knew when I see him. I forgot all about being seen myself and walked right up. All the men from Beckersville were there and no one noticed me except Jerry Tillford. He saw me and something happened. I’ll tell you about that.
I was standing looking at that horse and aching. In some way, I can’t tell how, I knew just how Sunstreak felt inside. He was quiet and letting the niggers rub his legs and Mr. Van Riddle himself put the saddle on, but he was just a raging torrent inside. He was like the water in the river at Niagara Falls just before it goes plunk down. That horse wasn’t thinking about running. He don’t have to think about that. He was just thinking about holding himself back ’til the time for the running came. I knew that. I could just in a way see right inside him. He was going to do some awful running and I knew it. He wasn’t bragging or letting on much or prancing or making a fuss, but just waiting. I knew it and Jerry Tillford his trainer knew. I looked up and then that man and I looked into each other’s eyes. Something happened to me. I guess I loved the man as much as I did the horse because he knew what I knew. Seemed to me there wasn’t anything in the world but that man and the horse and me. I cried and Jerry Tillford had a shine in his eyes. Then I came away to the fence to wait for the race. The horse was better than me, more steadier, and now I know better than Jerry. He was the quietest and he had to do the running.
Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories Page 21