Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  Bernice would likely enough think Bruce was on a drunk. He had been on two or three royal sprees after he married her. Once he and Tom Wills stayed on a bender for three days and would both have lost their jobs but that it came during Tom’s vacation time. Tom saved the reporter’s scalp. But never mind that. Bernice might think the paper had sent him out of town.

  Tom Wills might phone up to the apartment — a little angry— “Is John sick or what t’ell?”

  “No, he was here last night when I went out.”

  Bernice having her pride hurt. A woman might write short stories, do Sunday special stuff, go about freely with men (modern women who had any sense did that a lot nowdays — it’s the mood of the day) “still and all,” as that Ring Lardner would say, “it don’t make no difference.” Women nowdays are putting up a great little fight to get something they want, something they think they want anyway.

  That doesn’t make them any less women at bottom — maybe it doesn’t.

  Λ woman is a special thing then. You got to see that. Wake up, man! Things have changed in the last twenty years. You mossback! If you can get her you get her. If you can’t, you can’t. Don’t you think the world progresses at all? Sure it does. Look at the flying machines we got and the radio. Didn’t we have a swell war? Didn’t we lick the Germans?

  Men want to cheat. That’s whereon there is a lot of misunderstanding. What about that three-fifty Bruce kept hidden away for over four years, his getaway stake? When you go to the races, and the meeting lasts, say, thirty days, and you haven’t taken a trick and then the meeting is over, how you going to get out of town if you haven’t a cent put away, on the quiet? You got to walk out of town or sell the mare, haven’t you? Better hide it in the hay.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THREE OR FOUR times after Bruce married Bernice J[ they were both busted higher than a kite. Bernice had to borrow money and so did Bruce. Still and all he said nothing about that three-fifty. Something to the windward, eh? Had he all the time intended just what he finally did? If you’re that kind of a cove you might as well smile, get a laugh out of yourself if you can. Pretty soon you’ll be dead and then maybe there’ll be no laughs. No one ever figured out even Heaven a very jolly place. Dance life! Catch the swing of the dance if you can.

  Bruce and Tom Wills used to talk sometimes. They both had the same bees in their bonnets, though the buzzing never came out into words. Just a faint buzzing far off. They talked, tentatively, when they had taken several drinks — about some fellow, an imaginary figure who cut out, left his job, went on the grand sneak. Where to? What for? When they got to that part of their talk both men always felt a little lost. “They raise good apples up in Oregon,” Tom said. “I’m not so apple-hungry,” Bruce replied.

  Tom had an idea it wasn’t only men found life a little dizzy and heavy most of the time, that women had the same feeling — a lot of them anyway. “If they aren’t religious or haven’t kids there’s hell to pay,” he said. He told of a woman he knew. “She was a good quiet little wife and went along, tending up to her house, making everything comfortable for her husband, never a word out of her.

  “Then something happened. She was pretty goodlooking and played the piano pretty well so she got a job playing in a church and after that some fellow who owned a movie theater went to church one Sunday, because his little daughter had died and gone to Heaven the summer before and he felt he ought to square himself when the White Sox weren’t playing at home.

  “And so he offered her a better job in his movie place. She had a feeling for the keys and was a neat good-looking little thing — or at least a lot of men thought she was.” Tom Wills said he didn’t think she ever intended it at all, but the first thing you know she began to look down on her husband. “There she was, up on the heights,” Tom said. “She took a slant down and began to size up her hubby. He had seemed quite a thing once, but now — it wasn’t her fault. After ail, young or old, rich or poor, men were pretty easy to get — if you had the touch. She couldn’t help it — being talented that way.” What Tom meant to say was that this escape hunch was in everyone’s bonnet.

  Tom never said, “I’d like to beat it myself.” He never came out quite that strong. In the newspaper office they said that Tom’s wife had something on him. The young Jew who worked there told Bruce once that Tom was scared stiff of his wife, and the next day, when Tom and Bruce were lunching together, Tom told Bruce the same story about the young Jew. The Jew and Tom never got on well together. When Tom came down in the morning and didn’t feel very good-natured he always jumped on the Jew. He never did that to Bruce. “A nasty little word-slinger,” he said. “He’s stuck on himself because he can make words stand on their heads.” He leaned over and whispered to Bruce. “Fact,” he said, “it happens every Saturday night.”

  Was Tom nicer to Bruce, did he give him a lot of snap assignments because he thought they were in the same boat?

  BOOK FOUR

  CHAPTER TEN

  HEAT! BRUCE DUDLEY had just come down river.

  June, July, August, September in New Orleans. You can’t make a place something it won’t be. It was slow work getting down river. Few or no boats. Often whole days idling about in river towns. You can take a train and go where you please, but what’s the hurry?

  Bruce at that time, when he had just left Bernice and his newspaper job, had something in mind that expressed itself in the phrase— “What’s your hurry?” He sat in the shade of trees by the river-bank, got a ride once on a barge, rode on little local packets, sat in front of stores in river towns, slept, dreamed. People talked with a slow drawling speech, niggers were hoeing cotton, other niggers fished for catfish in the river.

  The niggers were something for Bruce to look at, think about. So many black men slowly growing brown. Then would come the light brown, the velvet-browns, Caucasian features. The brown women tending up to the job — getting the race lighter and lighter. Soft Southern nights, warm dusky nights. Shadows flitting at the edge of cotton-fields, in dusky roads by sawmill towns. Soft voices laughing, laughing.

  Oh, ma banjo dog,

  Oh, ho, ma banjo dog.

  Αn’ I ain’t go’na give you None of ma jelly roll.

  So much of that sort of thing in American life. If you are a thinking man — and Bruce was — you make half acquaintances — half friendships — Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Englishmen — Jews. The Middle Western intellectual circles along the edge of which Bruce had played — watching Bernice plunge more boldly in — were filled with men not American at all. There was a young Polish sculptor, an Italian sculptor, a French dilettante. Was there such a thing as an American? Perhaps Bruce was the thing himself. He was reckless, afraid, bold, shy.

  If you are a canvas do you shudder sometimes when the painter stands before you? All the others lending their color to him. A composition being made. Himself the composition.

  Could he ever really know a Jew, a German, a Frenchman, an Englishman?

  And now a nigger.

  Consciousness of brown men brown women, coming more and more into American life — by that token coming into him too.

  More willing to come, more avid to come than any Jew, German, Pole, Italian. Standing laughing — coming by the back door — with shuffling feet, a laugh — a dance in the body.

  Facts established would have to be recognized sometime — by individuals — when they were on an intellectual jag perhaps — as Bruce was then.

  In New Orleans, when Bruce got there, the long docks facing the river. On the river just ahead of him when he came the last twenty miles, a small houseboat fitted up with a gas engine. Signs on it. “JESUS WILL SAVE.” Some itinerant preacher from up river starting south to save the world. “THY WILL BE DONE.” The preacher, a sallow man with a dirty beard, in bare feet, at the wheel of the little boat. His wife, also in bare feet, sitting in a rocking-chair. Her teeth were black stumps. Two children in bare feet, lying on a narrow deck.

  The docks of the
city go around in a great crescent. Big ocean freighters coming in bringing coffee, bananas, fruits, goods, taking out cotton, lumber, corn, oils.

  Niggers on the docks, niggers in the city streets, niggers laughing. A slow dance always going on. German sea-captains, French, American, Swedish, Japanese, English, Scotch. The Germans now sailing under other flags than their own. The Scotch sailing under the English flag. Clean ships, dirty tramp ships, half-naked niggers — a shadow-dance.

  How much does it cost to be a good man, an earnest man? If we can’t produce good earnest men, how are we ever going to make any progress? You can’t ever get anywhere if you aren’t conscious — in earnest. A brown woman having thirteen children — a different man for every child — going to church too, singing, dancing, broad shoulders, broad hips, soft eyes, a soft laughing voice — getting God on Sunday night — getting — what — on Wednesday night?

  Men, you’ve got to be up and doing if you want progress.

  William Allen White, Heywood Broun — passing judgment on the arts — why not — Oh, ma banjo dog — Van Wyck Brooks, Frank Crowninshield, Tululla Bankhead, Henry Mencken, Anita Loos, Stark Young, Ring Lardner, Eva Le Gallienne, Jack Johnson, Bill Heywood, H. G. Wells write good books, don’t you think? The Literary Digest, The Dial Book of Modern Art, Harry Wills.

  They dance south — out of doors — whites in a pavilion in one field, blacks, browns, high browns, velvet-browns in a pavilion in the next field — but one.

  We’ve got to have more earnest men in this country.

  Grass growing in a field between.

  Oh, ma banjo dog!

  Song in the air, a slow dance. Heat. Bruce had some money then. He might have got a job, but what was the use? Well, he might have gone uptown and tackled the New Orleans Picayune, or the Item or States for a job. Why not go see Jack McClure, the ballad-maker — on the Picayune? Give us a song, Jack — a dance — the gumbo drift. Come, the night is hot. What was the use? He still had some of the money he had slipped into his pocket when he left Chicago. In New Orleans you can get a loft in which to sleep for five dollars a month if you know how. You know how when you don’t want to work — when you want to look and listen — when you want your body to be lazy while your mind works. New Orleans is not Chicago. It isn’t Cleveland or Detroit. Thank God for that!

  Nigger girls in the streets, nigger women, nigger men. There is a brown cat lurking in the shadow of a building. “Come, brown puss — come get your cream.” The men who work on the docks in New Orleans have slender flanks like running horses, broad shoulders, loose heavy lips hanging down — faces like old monkeys sometimes — bodies like young gods — sometimes. On Sundays — when they go to church, or to a bayou baptizing, the brown girls do sure cut loose with the colors — gaudy nigger colors on nigger women making the streets flame — deep purples, reds, yellows, green like young corn-shoots coming up. They sweat. The skin colors brown, golden yellow, reddish brown, purple-brown. When the sweat runs down high brown backs the colors come out and dance before the eyes. Flash that up, you silly painters, catch it dancing. Song-tones in words, music in words — in colors too. Silly American painters! They chase a Gauguin shadow to the South Seas. Bruce wrote a few poems. Bernice had got very far away in, oh such a short time. Good thing she didn’t know. Good thing no one knows how unimportant he is. We need earnest men — got to have ’em. Who’ll run the show if we don’t get that kind? For Bruce — for the time — no sensual feeling that need be expressed through his body.

  Hot days. Sweet Mama!

  Funny business, Bruce trying to write poems. When he had that job on the newspaper, where a man is supposed to write, he never wanted to write at all.

  Southern white men writing songs — fill themselves first with Keats and Shelley.

  I am giving out of the richness of myself to many mornings.

  At night, when the waters of the seas murmur I am murmuring.

  I have surrendered to seas and suns and days and swinging ships.

  My blood is thick with surrender.

  It shall be let out through wounds and shall color the seas and the earth.

  My blood shall color the earth where the seas come for the night kiss and the seas shall be red.

  What did that mean? Oh, laugh a little, men! What matters what it means?

  Or again —

  Give me the word.

  Let my throat and my lips caress the words of your lips.

  Give me the word.

  Give me three words, a dozen, a hundred, a history.

  Give me the word.

  A broken jargon of words in the head. In old New Orleans the narrow streets are filled with iron gates leading away, past damp old walls, to cool patios. It is very lovely — old shadows dancing on sweet old walls, but some day it wall all be torn away to make room for factories.

  Bruce lived for five months in an old house where rent was low, where cockroaches scurried up and down the walls. Nigger women lived in the building across the narrow street.

  You lie naked on the bed on hot summer mornings and let the slow creeping river-wind come, if it will. Across the street, in another room, a nigger woman of twenty arises at five and stretches her arms. Bruce rolls and looks. Sometimes she sleeps alone but sometimes a brown man sleeps with her. Then they both stretch. Thin-flanked brown man. Nigger girl with slender flexible body. She knows Bruce is looking. What does it matter? He is looking as one might look at trees, at young colts playing in a pasture.

  Bruce got out of his bed and went away along a narrow street to another street near the river where he got coffee and a roll of bread for five cents. Thinking of niggers! What sort of business is that? How come? Northern men so often get ugly when they think of niggers, or they get sentimental. Give pity where none is needed. The men and women of the South understand better, maybe. ‘Oh, hell, don’t get fussy! Let things flow! Let us alone! We’ll float!” Brown blood flowing, white blood flowing, deep river flowing.

  A slow dance, music, ships, cotton, corn, coffee. Slow lazy laughter of niggers. Bruce remembered a line he had once seen written by a negro. “Would white poet ever know why my people walk so softly and laugh at sunrise?”

  Heat. The sun coming up in a mustard-colored sky. Driving rains that came, swirled over a half-dozen blocks of city streets and in ten minutes no trace of moisture left. Too much wet warmth for a little more wet warmth to matter. The sun licking it up, taking a drink for itself. One might get clear-headed here. Clear-headed about what? Well, don’t hurry. Take your time.

  Bruce lay lazy in bed. The brown girl’s body was like the thick waving leaf of a young banana plant. If you were a painter now, you could paint that, maybe. Paint a brown nigger girl in a broad leaf waving and send it up North. Why not sell it to a society woman of New Orleans? Get some money to loaf a while longer on. She wouldn’t know, would never guess. Paint a brown laborer’s narrow suave flanks onto the trunk of a tree. Send it to the Art Institute in Chicago. Send it to the Anderson Galleries in New York. A French painter went down to the South Seas. Freddy O’Brien went down. Remember when the brown woman tried to ravage him and he said how he escaped? Gauguin put a lot of pep in his book but they trimmed it for us. No one cared much, not after Gauguin was dead anyway. You get a cup of such coffee for five cents and a big roll of bread. No swill. In Chicago, morning coffee at cheap places is like swill. Niggers like good things. Good big sweet words, flesh, corn, cane. Niggers like a free throat for song. You’re a nigger down South and you get some white blood in you. A little more, and a little more. Northern travelers help, they say. Oh, Lord! Oh, my banjo dog! Do you remember the night when that Gauguin came home to his little hut and there, in the bed, was the slender brown girl waiting for him? Better read that book. “Noa-Noa,” they call it. Brown mysticism in the walls of a room, in the hair — of a Frenchman, in the eyes of a brown girl. Noa-Noa. Do you remember the sense of strangeness? French painter kneeling on the floor in the darkness, smelling the strangeness. T
he brown girl smelling the strangeness. Love? What ho! Smelling strangeness.

  Go softly. Don’t hurry. What’s all the shooting about?

  A little more white, a little more white, graying white, muddy white, thick lips — staying sometimes. Over we go!

  Something lost too. The dance of bodies, a slow dance.

  Bruce on a bed in a five-dollar room. Away off, broad leaves of young banana plants waving. “D’you know why my people laugh in the morning? Do you know why my people walk softly?”

  Sleep again, white man. No hurry. Then along a street for coffee and a roll of bread, five cents. Sailors off ships, bleary-eyed. Old nigger women and white women going to market. They know each other, white women, nigger women. Go soft. Don’t hurry!

  Song — a slow dance. A white man lying still on docks, in a five-dollar-a-month bed. Heat. No hurry. When you get that hurry out of you the mind works maybe. Maybe song will start in you too.

  Lord, it would be nice with Tom Wills down here.

  Shall I write him a letter? No, better not. After a while, when cool days come, you mosey along up North again. Come back here some day. Stay here some day. Look and listen.

  Song — dance — a slow dance.

  BOOK FIVE

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “SATURDAY NIGHT AND supper on the table. My old woman cooking supper — what! Me with a pipe in my mouth.”

  Lif’ up the skillet, put down the lid,

  Mama’s go’na make me some a-risen bread.

  An’ I ain’t go’na give you