“Ugh!” Will’s lips made a little grunting noise as he read Kate’s words. He was sitting in a chair, in his oily overalls, and where his fingers gripped the white sheets of the letter there was a little oily smudge. Also his hand trembled a little. He got up, poured water out of a pitcher into a white bowl, and began washing his face and hands.
When he had partly dressed a visitor came. There was the shuffling sound of weary feet along a hallway, and the cornet player put his head timidly in at the door. The dog-like appealing look Will had noted on the train was still in his eyes. Now he was planning something, a kind of gentle revolt against his wife’s power in the house, and he wanted Will’s moral support.
For a week he had been coming for talk to Will’s room almost every evening. There were two things he wanted. In the evening sometimes, as he sat in his room, he wanted to blow upon his cornet, and he wanted a little money to jingle in his pockets.
And there was a sense in which Will, the newcomer in the house, was his property, did not belong to his wife. Often in the evenings he had talked to the weary and sleepy young workman, until Will’s eyes had closed and he snored gently. The old man sat on the one chair in the room, and Will sat on the edge of the bed, while old lips told the tale of a lost youth, boasted a little. When Will’s body had slumped down upon the bed the old man got to his feet and moved with cat-like steps about the room. One mustn’t raise the voice too loudly after all. Had Will gone to sleep? The cornet player threw his shoulders back and bold words came, in a half-whisper, from his lips. To tell the truth, he had been a fool about the money he had made over to his wife and, if his wife had taken advantage of him, it wasn’t her fault. For his present position in life he had no one to blame but himself. What from the very beginning he had most lacked was boldness. It was a man’s duty to be a man and, for a long time, he had been thinking—well, the boarding-house no doubt made a profit and he should have his share. His wife was a good girl all right, but when one came right down to it, all women seemed to lack a sense of a man’s position in life.
“I’ll have to speak to her—yes siree, I’m going to speak right up to her. I may have to be a little harsh but it’s my money runs this house, and I want my share of the profits. No foolishness now. Shell out, I tell you,” the old man whispered, peering out of the corners of his blue, watery eyes at the sleeping form of the young man on the bed.
* * *
And now again the old man stood at the door of the room, looking anxiously in. A bell called insistently, announcing that the evening meal was ready to be served, and they went below, Will leading the way. At a long table in the dining room several men had already gathered, and there was the sound of more footsteps on the stairs.
Two long rows of young workmen eating silently. Saturday night and two long rows of young workmen eating in silence.
After the eating, and on this particular night, there would be a swift flight of all these young men down into the town, down into the lighted parts of the town.
Will sat at his place gripping the sides of his chair.
There were things men did on Saturday nights. Work was at an end for the week and money jingled in pockets. Young workmen ate in silence and hurried away, one by one, down into the town.
Will’s sister Kate was going to be married in the spring. Her walking about with the young clerk from the jewelry store, in the streets of Bidwell, had come to something.
Young workmen employed in factories in Erie, Pennsylvania, dressed themselves in their best clothes and walked about in the lighted streets of Erie on Saturday evenings. They went into parks. Some stood talking to girls while others walked with girls through the streets. And there were still others who went into saloons and had drinks. Men stood talking together at a bar. “Dang that foreman of mine! I’ll bust him in the jaw if he gives me any of his lip.”
There was a young man from Bidwell, sitting at a table in a boarding house at Erie, Pennsylvania, and before him on a plate was a great pile of meat and potatoes. The room was not very well lighted. It was dark and gloomy, and there were black streaks on the grey wall paper. Shadows played on the walls. On all sides of the young man sat other young men—eating silently, hurriedly.
Will got abruptly up from the table and started for the door that led into the street but the others paid no attention to him. If he did not want to eat his meat and potatoes, it made no difference to them. The mistress of the house, the wife of the old cornet player, waited on table when the men ate, but now she had gone away to the kitchen. She was a silent grim-looking woman, dressed always in a black dress.
To the others in the room—except only the old cornet player—Will’s going or staying meant nothing at all. He was a young workman, and at such places young workmen were always going and coming.
A man with broad shoulders and a black mustache, a little older than most of the others, did glance up from his business of eating. He nudged his neighbor, and then made a jerky movement with his thumb over his shoulder. “The new guy has hooked up quickly, eh?” he said, smiling. “He can’t even wait to eat. Lordy, he’s got an early date—some skirt waiting for him.”
At his place, opposite where Will had been seated, the cornet player saw Will go, and his eyes followed, filled with alarm. He had counted on an evening of talk, of speaking to Will about his youth, boasting a little in his gentle hesitating way. Now Will had reached the door that led to the street, and in the old man’s eyes tears began to gather. Again his lip trembled. Tears were always gathering in the man’s eyes, and his lips trembled at the slightest provocation. It was no wonder he could no longer blow a cornet in a band.
* * *
And now Will was outside the house in the darkness and, for the cornet player, the evening was spoiled, the house a deserted empty place. He had intended being very plain in his evening’s talk with Will, and wanted particularly to speak of a new attitude, he hoped to assume toward his wife, in the matter of money. Talking the whole matter out with Will would give him new courage, make him bolder. Well, if his money had bought the house, that was now a boarding house, he should have some share in its profits. There must be profits. Why run a boarding house without profits? The woman he had married was no fool.
Even though a man were old he needed a little money in his pockets. Well, an old man, like himself, has a friend, a young fellow, and now and then he wanted to be able to say to his friend, “Come on friend, let’s have a glass of beer. I know a good place. Let’s have a glass of beer and go to the movies. This is on me.”
The cornet player could not eat his meat and potatoes. For a time he stared over the heads of the others, and then got up to go to his room. His wife followed into the little hallway at the foot of the stairs. “What’s the matter, dearie—are you sick?” she asked.
“No,” he answered, “I just didn’t want any supper.” He did not look at her, but tramped slowly and heavily up the stairs.
* * *
Will was walking hurriedly through streets but did not go down into the brightly lighted sections of town. The boarding house stood on a factory street and, turning northward, he crossed several railroad tracks and went toward the docks, along the shore of Lake Erie. There was something to be settled with himself, something to be faced. Could he manage the matter?
He walked along, hurriedly at first, and then more slowly. It was getting into late October now and there was a sharpness like frost in the air. The spaces between street lamps were long, and he plunged in and out of areas of darkness. Why was it that everything about him seemed suddenly strange and unreal? He had forgotten to bring his overcoat from Bidwell and would have to write Kate to send it.
Now he had almost reached the docks. Not only the night but his own body, the pavements under his feet, and the stars far away in the sky—even the solid factory buildings he was now passing—seemed strange and unreal. It was almost as though one could thrust out an arm and push a hand through the walls, as one might push his hand into a f
og or a cloud of smoke. All the people Will passed seemed strange, and acted in a strange way. Dark figures surged toward him out of the darkness. By a factory wall there was a man standing—perfectly still, motionless. There was something almost unbelievable about the actions of such men and the strangeness of such hours as the one through which he was now passing. He walked within a few inches of the motionless man. Was it a man or a shadow on the wall? The life Will was now to lead alone, had become a strange, a vast terrifying thing. Perhaps all life was like that, a vastness and emptiness.
He came out into a place where ships were made fast to a dock and stood for a time, facing the high wall-like side of a vessel. It looked dark and deserted. When he turned his head he became aware of a man and a woman passing along a roadway. Their feet made no sound in the thick dust of the roadway, and he could not see or hear them, but knew they were there. Some part of a woman’s dress—something white—flashed faintly into view and the man’s figure was a dark mass against the dark mass of the night. “Oh, come on, don’t be afraid,” the man whispered, hoarsely. “There won’t anything happen to you.”
“Do shut up,” a woman’s voice answered, and there was a quick outburst of laughter. The figures fluttered away. “You don’t know what you are talking about,” the woman’s voice said again.
Now that he had got Kate’s letter, Will was no longer a boy. A boy is, quite naturally, and without his having anything to do with the matter, connected with something—and now that connection had been cut. He had been pushed out of the nest and that fact, the pushing of himself off the nest’s rim, was something accomplished. The difficulty was that, while he was no longer a boy, he had not yet become a man. He was a thing swinging in space. There was no place to put down his feet.
He stood in the darkness under the shadow of the ship making queer little wriggling motions with his shoulders, that had become now almost the shoulders of a man. No need now to think of evenings at the Appleton house with Kate and Fred standing about, and his father, Tom Appleton, spreading his paint brushes on the kitchen table, no need of thinking of the sound of Kate’s feet going up a stairway of the Appleton house, late at night when she had been out walking with her clerk. What was the good of trying to amuse oneself by thinking of a shepherd dog in an Ohio town, a dog made ridiculous by the trembling hand of a timid old woman?
One stood face to face with manhood now—one stood alone. If only one could get one’s feet down upon something, could get over this feeling of falling through space, through a vast emptiness.
“Manhood”—the word had a queer sound in the head. What did it mean?
Will tried to think of himself as a man, doing a man’s work in a factory. There was nothing in the factory, where he was now employed, upon which he could put down his feet. All day he stood at a machine and bored holes in pieces of iron. A boy brought to him the little, short, meaningless pieces of iron in a box-like truck and, one by one, he picked them up and placed them under the point of a drill. He pulled a lever and the drill came down and bit into the piece of iron. A little, smoke-like vapor arose, and then he squirted oil on the spot where the drill was working. Then the lever was thrown up again. The hole was drilled and now the meaningless pieces of iron was thrown into another box-like truck. It had nothing to do with him. He had nothing to do with it.
At the noon hour, at the factory, one moved about a bit, stepped outside the factory door to stand for a moment in the sun. Inside, men were sitting along benches eating lunches out of dinner pails and some had washed their hands while others had not bothered about such a trivial matter. They were eating in silence. A tall man spat on the floor and then drew his foot across the spot. Nights came and one went home from the factory to eat, sitting with other silent men, and later a boastful old man came into one’s room to talk. One lay on a bed and tried to listen, but presently fell asleep. Men were like the pieces of iron in which holes had been bored—one pitched them aside into a box-like truck. One had nothing really to do with them. They had nothing to do with oneself. Life became a procession of days and perhaps all life was just like that—just a procession of days.
“Manhood.”
Did one go out of one place and into another? Were youth and manhood two houses, in which one lived during different periods in life? It was evident something of importance must be about to happen to his sister Kate. First, she had been a young woman, having two brothers and a father, living with them in a house at Bidwell, Ohio.
And then a day was to come when she became something else. She married and went to live in another house and had a husband. Perhaps children would be born to her. It was evident Kate had got hold of something, that her hands had reached out and had grasped something definite. Kate had swung herself off the rim of the home nest and, right away, her feet had landed on another limb of the tree of life—womanhood.
As he stood in the darkness something caught at Will’s throat. He was fighting again but what was he fighting? A fellow like himself did not move out of one house and into another. There was a house in which one lived, and then suddenly and unexpectedly, it fell apart. One stood on the rim of the nest and looked about, and a hand reached out from the warmth of the nest and pushed one off into space. There was no place for a fellow to put down his feet. He was one swinging in space.
What—a great fellow, nearly six feet tall now, and crying in the darkness, in the shadow of a ship, like a child! He walked, filled with determination, out of the darkness, along many streets of factories and came into a street of houses. He passed a store where groceries were sold and looking in saw, by a clock on the wall, that it was already ten o’clock. Two drunken men came out at the door of a house and stood on a little porch. One of them clung to a railing about the porch, and the other pulled at his arm. “Let me alone. It’s settled. I want you to let me alone,” grumbled the man clinging to the railing.
* * *
Will went to his boarding house and climbed the stairs wearily. The devil—one might face anything if one but knew what was to be faced!
He turned on a light and sat down in his room on the edge of the bed, and the old cornet player pounced upon him, pounced like a little animal, lying under a bush along a path in a forest, and waiting for food. He came into Will’s room carrying his cornet, and there was an almost bold look in his eyes. Standing firmly on his old legs in the centre of the room, he made a declaration. “I’m going to play it. I don’t care what she says, I’m going to play it,” he said.
He put the cornet to his lips and blew two or three notes—so softly that even Will, sitting so closely, could barely hear. Then his eyes wavered. “My lip’s no good,” he said. He thrust the cornet at Will. “You blow it,” he said.
Will sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. There was a notion floating in his mind now. Was there something, a thought in which one could find comfort. There was now, before him, standing before him in the room, a man who was after all not a man. He was a child as Will was too really, had always been such a child, would always be such a child. One need not be too afraid. Children were all about, everywhere. If one were a child and lost in a vast, empty space, one could at least talk to some other child. One could have conversations, understand perhaps something of the eternal childishness of oneself and others.
Will’s thoughts were not very definite. He only felt suddenly warm and comfortable in the little room at the top of the boarding house.
And now the man was again explaining himself. He wanted to assert his manhood. “I stay up here,” he explained, “and don’t go down there, to sleep in the room with my wife because I don’t want to. That’s the only reason. I could if I wanted to. She has the bronchitis—but don’t tell anyone. Women hate to have anyone told. She isn’t so bad. I can do what I please.”
He kept urging Will to put the cornet to his lips and blow. There was in him an intense eagerness. “You can’t really make any music—you don’t know how—but that don’t make any difference,” he said.
“The thing to do is to make a noise, make a deuce of a racket, blow like the devil.”
Again Will felt like crying but the sense of vastness and loneliness, that had been in him since he got aboard the train that night at Bidwell, had gone. “Well, I can’t go on forever being a baby. Kate has a right to get married,” he thought, putting the cornet to his lips. He blew two or three notes, softly.
“No, I tell you, no! That isn’t the way! Blow on it! Don’t be afraid! I tell you I want you to do it. Make a deuce of a racket! I tell you what, I own this house. We don’t need to be afraid. We can do what we please. Go ahead! Make a deuce of a racket!” the old man kept pleading.
The Man’s Story
* * *
DURING his trial for murder and later, after he had been cleared through the confession of that queer little bald chap with the nervous hands, I watched him, fascinated by his continued effort to make something understood.
He was persistently interested in something, having nothing to do with the charge that he had murdered the woman. The matter of whether or not, and by due process of law, he was to be convicted of murder and hanged by the neck until he was dead didn’t seem to interest him. The law was something outside his life and he declined to have anything to do with the killing as one might decline a cigarette. “I thank you, I am not smoking at present. I made a bet with a fellow that I could go along without smoking cigarettes for a month.”
That is the sort of thing I mean. It was puzzling. Really, had he been guilty and trying to save his neck he couldn’t have taken a better line. You see, at first, everyone thought he had done the killing; we were all convinced of it, and then, just because of that magnificent air of indifference, everyone began wanting to save him. When news came of the confession of the crazy little stage-hand everyone broke out into cheers.
Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories Page 60