“Hello you’ self, you China boy,” she answered laughing.
Again she began to paddle vigorously. A log shot out from amid the trees at the river’s edge, the trees that were submerged in the yellow water, and a young black stood astride it. With the pole in his hand he gave a vigorous push against one of the trees and the log came swiftly down toward the raft where two other men stood waiting.
The sun was shining on the neck and shoulders of the brown girl in the boat. The movements of her arms made dancing lights on her skin. The skin was brown, a golden coppery brown. Her boat slipped about a bend of the river and disappeared. There was a moment of silence and then, from back among the trees, a voice took up a new song in which the other blacks joined —
“Doubting Thomas, doubting Thomas,
Doubting Thomas, doubt no more.
And before I’d be a slave,
I’d be buried in my grave,
And go home to my father and be saved.”
John Webster stood with blinking eyes watching the men unload boards at his factory door. The little voices within him were saying strange joyous things. One could not be just a manufacturer of washing machines in a Wisconsin town. In spite of oneself one became, at odd moments, something else too. One became a part of something as broad as the land in which one lived. One went about in a little shop in a town. The shop was in an obscure place, by a railroad track and beside a shallow stream, but it was also a part of some vast thing no one had as yet begun to understand. He himself was a man standing, clad in ordinary clothes, but within his clothes, and within his body too there was something, well perhaps not vast in itself, but vaguely indefinitely connected with some vast thing. It was odd he had never thought of that before. Had he thought of it? There were the men before him unloading the timbers. They touched the timbers with their hands. A kind of union was made between them and the black men who had cut the timbers and floated them down a stream to a sawmill in some far-away Southern place. One went about all day and every day touching things other men had touched. There was something wanted, a consciousness of the thing touched. A consciousness of the significance of things and people.
“And before I’d be a slave,
I’d be buried in my grave,
And go home to my father and be saved.”
He went through the door into his shop. Near by, at a machine, a man was sawing boards. There was no doubt the pieces selected for the making of his washing machine were not always of the best. Some of the pieces would soon enough break. They were put into a part of the machine where it didn’t so much matter, where they wouldn’t be seen. The machines had to be sold at a low price. He felt a little ashamed and then laughed. One might easily become involved in small things when there were big rich things to be thought about. One was a child and had to learn to walk. What was it one had to learn? To walk about smelling things, tasting things, feeling things perhaps. One had to learn who else was in the world besides oneself, for one thing. One had to look about a little. It was all very well to be thinking that better boards should be put into washing machines that poor women bought, but one might easily become corrupted by giving oneself over to such thoughts. There was danger of a kind of smug self-righteousness got from thinking about putting only good boards in washing machines. He had known men like that and had always had a kind of contempt for them.
He went on through the factory, past rows of men and boys standing at machines at work, forming the various parts of the washing machines, putting the parts together, painting and packing the machines for shipment. The upper part of the building was given over to the storage of materials. He walked through piles of cut boards to a window that looked down upon the shallow and now halfdry stream on the banks of which the factory stood. There were signs all about forbidding smoking in the factory, but he had forgotten and now took a cigarette out of his pocket and lighted it.
A rhythm of thought went on within him that was in some way related to the rhythm of the bodies of the black men at work in the forest of the world of his imagination. He had been standing before his factory door in a town in the state of Wisconsin but at the same time he was in the South, with some blacks working on a river, and at the same time with some fishermen on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, when a man came down to the shore and began to say strange words. “There must be more than one of me,” he thought vaguely and when his mind had formed the thought something seemed to have happened within himself. A few moments before, as he stood in the presence of Natalie Swartz down in the office, he had thought of her body as a house within which she lived. That was an illuminating thought too. Why could not more than one person live within such a house?
It would clear a good many things up if such an idea got abroad. No doubt it was an idea that had come to a great many other men, but perhaps they had not put it forth in a simple enough way. He had himself gone to school in his town and later to the University at Madison. For a time he had read a good many books. At one time he had thought he might like to be a writer of books.
And no doubt a great many of the writers of books had been visited by just such thoughts as he was having now. Within the pages of some books one found a kind of refuge from the tangle of things in daily life. Perhaps as they wrote, these men felt, as he felt now, exhilarated, carried out of themselves.
He puffed at his cigarette and looked beyond the river. His factory was at the edge of town and beyond the river fields began. All men and women were like himself standing on a common ground. All over America, all over the world for that matter, men and women did outward things much as he did. They ate food, slept, worked, made love.
He was growing a little weary of thinking and rubbed his hand across his forehead. His cigarette had burned out and he dropped it on the floor and lighted another. Men and women tried to go within one another’s bodies, were at times almost insanely anxious to do it. That was called making love. He wondered if a time might come when men and women did that quite freely. It was difficult to try to think one’s way through such a tangle of thoughts.
There was one thing sure, he had never before been in this state. Well that was not true. There was a time once. It was when he married. Then he had felt as he did now, but something had happened.
He began to think of Natalie Swartz. There was something clear and innocent about her. Perhaps, without knowing, he had fallen in love with her, the daughter of a saloon-keeper and the drunken old Irish woman. That would explain much if it had happened.
He became aware of a man standing near him and turned. A workman in overalls stood a few feet away. He smiled. “I guess you have forgotten something,” he said. John Webster smiled also. “Well yes,” he said, “a good many things. I’m nearly forty years old and I guess I have forgotten to live. What about you?”
The workman smiled again. “I mean the cigarettes,” he said and pointed to the burning and smoking end of the cigarette that lay on the floor. John Webster put his foot on it and then dropping the other cigarette to the floor put his foot on that. He and the workman stood looking at each other as but a little while before he had looked at Natalie Swartz. “I wonder if I might go within his house also,” he thought. “Well, I thank you. I had forgotten. My mind was far away,” he said aloud. The workman nodded. “I am sometimes like that myself,” he explained.
The puzzled manufacturer went down out of the upstairs room and along a branch of the railroad that led into the shop to the main tracks along which he walked toward the more inhabited part of town. “It must be almost noon,” he thought. Usually he had lunch at a place near his factory and his employees brought their lunches in packages and tin pails. He thought now he would go to his own home. He would not be expected but thought he would like to look at his wife and daughter. A passenger train came rushing down along the tracks and although the whistle blew madly he was unaware of it. Then when it was almost upon him a young negro, a tramp perhaps, at any rate a black man in ragged clothes who was also walking o
n the tracks, ran to him and taking hold of his coat jerked him violently to one side. The train rushed past and he stood staring after it. He and the young negro also looked into each other’s eyes. He put his hand into his pocket, instinctively feeling that he should pay the man for the service done him.
And then a kind of shudder ran through his body. He was very tired. “My mind was far away,” he said. “Yes, boss. I’m sometimes that way myself,” the young negro said, smiling and walking away along the tracks.
II
JOHN WEBSTER RODE to his house on a street car. It was half-past twelve o’clock when he arrived and, as he had anticipated, he was not expected. Behind his house, a rather commonplace looking frame affair, there was a little garden with two apple trees. He walked around the house and saw his daughter, Jane Webster, lying in a hammock hung between the trees. There was an old rocking-chair under one of the trees near the hammock and he went and sat in it. His daughter was surprised at his coming upon her so, at the noon hour when he so seldom appeared. “Well, hello Dad,” she said listlessly, sitting up and dropping on the grass at his feet a book she had been reading. “Is there anything wrong?” she asked. He shook his head.
Picking up the book he began to read and her head dropped again to the cushion in the hammock. The book was a modern novel of the period. It concerned life in the old city of New Orleans. He read a few pages. It was no doubt the sort of thing that might take one out of oneself, take one away from the dullness of life. A young man was stealing along a street in the darkness and had a cloak wrapped about his shoulders. Overhead the moon shone. The magnolia trees were in blossom filling the air with perfume. The young man was very handsome. The scene of the novel was laid in the time before the Civil War and he owned a great many slaves.
John Webster closed the book. There was no need of reading. When he was still a young man he had sometimes read such books himself. They took one out of oneself, made the dullness of everyday existence seem less terrible.
That was an odd thought, that everyday existence need be dull. There was no doubt the last twenty years of his own life had been dull, but during that morning, life had not been so. It seemed to him he had never before had such a morning.
Another book lay in the hammock and he took it up and read a few lines:
“You see,” said Wilberforce calmly, ‘I am returning to South Africa soon. I am not even planning to cast my fortunes with Virginia.”
Umbrage broke into protestations, came up, and put his hand on John’s arm, and then Malloy looked at his daughter. As he feared would be the case, her eyes were fastened on Charles Wilberforce. He had thought, when he brought her to Richmond that night, that she was looking wonderfully well and gay. So indeed she had been, with the prospect before her of seeing Charles again after six weeks. Now she was lifeless and pale as a candle from which the flame has been struck.
John Webster glanced at his daughter. As he sat he could look directly into her face.
“As pale as a candle from which the flame has been struck, huh. What a fancy way of putting things.” Well, his own daughter Jane was not pale. She was a robust young thing. “A candle that has never been lighted,” he thought.
It was a strange and terrible fact, but the truth was he had never thought much about his daughter, and here she was almost a woman. There was no doubt she already had the body of a woman. The functions of womanhood went on in her body. He sat, looking directly at her. A moment before he had been very weary, now the weariness was quite gone. “She might already have had a child, he thought. Her body was prepared for child-bearing, it had grown and developed to that state. What an immature face she had. Her mouth was pretty but there was something, a kind of blankness. “Her face is like a fair sheet of paper on which nothing has been written.”
Her eyes in wandering met his eyes. It was odd. Something like fright came into them. She sat quickly up. “What’s the matter with you, Dad?” she asked sharply. He smiled. “There isn’t anything the matter,” he said, looking away. “I thought I’d come home to lunch. Is there anything wrong about that?”
His wife, Mary Webster, came to the back door of the house and called her daughter. When she saw her husband her eyebrows went up. “This is unexpected. What brought you home at this time of the day?” she asked.
They went into the house and along a hallway to the dining room, but there was no place set for him. He had a feeling they both thought there was something wrong, almost immoral, about his being home at that time of the day. It was unexpected and the unexpected has a doubtful air. He concluded he had better explain. “I had a headache and thought I would come home and lie down for an hour,” he said. He felt they looked relieved, as though he had taken a load off their minds, and smiled at the thought. “May I have a cup of tea? Will it be too much trouble?” he asked.
While the tea was being brought he pretended to look out through a window, but in secret studied his wife’s face. She was like her daughter. There was nothing written on her face. Her body was getting heavy.
She had been a tall slender girl with yellow hair when he married her. Now the impression she gave off was of one who had grown large without purpose, “somewhat as cattle are fattened for slaughter,” he thought. One did not feel the bone and muscle back of her bulk. Her yellow hair that, when she was younger, had a way of glistening strangely in the sunlight was now rather colorless. It had the air of being dead at the roots and there were folds of quite meaningless flesh on the face among which little streams of wrinkles wandered.
“Her face is a blank thing, untouched by the finger of life,” he thought. “She is a tall tower, without a foundation, that will soon fall down.” There was something very lovely and at the same time rather terrible to himself in the state he was now in. Things he said or thought to himself had a kind of poetic power in them. A group of words formed in his mind and the words had power and meaning. He sat playing with the handle of the teacup. Suddenly a great desire to see his own body came over him. He arose and with an apology went out of the room and up a stairway. His wife called to him: “Jane and I are going to drive out into the country. Is there anything I can do for you before we go?”
He stopped on the stairs, but did not answer at once. Her voice was like her face, a little fleshy and heavy. How odd it was for him, a commonplace washing machine manufacturer in a Wisconsin town, to be thinking in this way, to be noting all these little details of life. He resorted to a trick, wanting to hear his daughter’s voice. “Did you call to me, Jane?” he asked. The daughter answered, explaining that it was her mother who had spoken and repeating what had been said. He answered that he wanted nothing but to lie down for an hour and went on up the stairs and into his own room. The daughter’s voice, like the mother’s, seemed to represent her exactly. It was young and clear, but had no resonance. He closed the door to his room and bolted it. Then he began taking off his clothes.
Now he was not in the least weary. “I’m sure I must be a little insane. A sane person would not note every little thing that goes on as I do to-day,” he thought. He sang softly, wanting to hear his own voice, to in a way test it against the voices of his wife and daughter. He hummed over the words of a negro song that had been in his mind earlier in the day,
“And before I’d be a slave,
I’d be buried in my grave,
And go home to my father and be saved.”
He thought his own voice all right. The words came out of his throat clearly and there was a kind of resonance too. “Had I tried to sing yesterday it would not have sounded like that,” he concluded. The voices of his mind were playing about busily. There was a kind of gaiety in him. The thought that had come that morning when he looked into the eyes of Natalie Swartz came running back. His own body, that was now naked, was a house. He went and stood before a mirror and looked at himself. His body was still slender and healthy looking, outside. “I think I know what all this business is I am going through,” he concluded. “A kind of
house cleaning is going on. My house has been vacant now for twenty years. Dust has settled on the walls and furniture. Now, for some reason I do not understand, the doors and windows have been thrown open. I shall have to scrub the walls and the floors, make everything sweet and clean as it is in Natalie’s house. Then I shall invite people in to visit me.” He ran his hands over his naked body, over his breasts, arms, and legs. Something within him was laughing.
He went and threw himself, thus naked on the bed. There were four sleeping rooms in the upper floor of the house. His own was at a corner and there were doors opening into his wife’s and his daughter’s rooms. When he had first married his wife they had slept together, but when the baby came they gave that up and never did it afterward. Once in a long while now he went in to his wife at night. She wanted him, let him know in some woman’s way that she wanted him, and he went, not happily or eagerly, but because he was a man and she a woman and it was done. The thought wearied him a little. “Well it hasn’t happened for some weeks.” He did not want to think about it.
He owned a horse and carriage that was kept at a livery stable and now it was being driven up to the door of the house. He heard the front door close. His wife and daughter were driving out into the country. The window of his room was open and a breeze blew in and across his body. The next-door neighbor had a garden and cultivated flowers. The air that came in was fragrant. The sounds were all soft, quiet sounds. Sparrows chirped. A large winged insect flew against the screen that covered the window and crawled slowly toward the top. Away off somewhere the bell of a locomotive began to ring. Perhaps it was on the tracks by his factory where Natalie was now sitting at her desk. He turned to look at the winged thing, crawling slowly. The little voices that lived within one’s body were not always serious. Sometimes they played like children. One of the voices declared that the eyes of the insect were looking at him with approval. Now the insect was speaking. “You are a devil of a fellow to have been so long asleep,” it said. The bell of the locomotive could still be heard, coming from a long distance, softly. “I’ll tell Natalie what that winged fellow had to say,” he thought and smiled at the ceiling. His cheeks became flushed and he slept quietly with his hands thrown above his head, as a child sleeps.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 83