These for Tar the dreams of another and much later time. The child going toward the great [yawning] doors of the bam, his sister clinging to his hand, the while she joined in a stream of talk she and the farm girl were to keep up until they drove Tar half mad with loneliness, had no such thoughts. In him there is no conciousness of barns and their smell, of tall com growing in fields, of wheat shocks standing like sentinels on distant hills. There was just a little animal in short skirts and with bare legs and feet, the son of a harness maker in an Ohio village who felt himself neglected and alone in the world.
The two girls went into the barn through wide swinging doors and Tar’s sister pointed to a box near the door. It was a small box and an idea had come to her. She would get rid of [him for a time]. Pointing to the box and assuming, as nearly as she could, his mother’s tone when she gave a command, the sister told him to sit down. “You stay right there until I come back and don’t you dare go away,” she said, shaking her finger at him. Huh! Indeed! What a little woman she thought herself! She had black curls and wore shoes and Tar’s mother had let her wear her Sunday dress while the farm girl and Tar were both bare-footed. She was being a grand lady now. If she only knew how much Tar resented her tone. If he had been a bit older he might have told her but, had he tried to speak just at that moment, tears would surely have come.
The two girls began climbing a ladder to a hay loft above, the farm girl leading the way. Tar’s sister was afraid and trembled as she climbed and would have liked being a town girl and timid but having assumed the role of grown woman [“with the child] had to play it out. They disappeared through a dark hole above and for a time rolled and tumbled about on the hay in the loft, laughing and screaming as girls do at such times. Then silence settled down over the bam. Now the girls had hidden themselves away in the loft and were no doubt talking of women’s affairs. What do women talk of when they are alone together? Tar always wanted to know. Grown women in the farm house talking, girls in the loft talking. Occasionally he could hear them laughing. Why all the laughing and talking?
Women were always coming to the door of the house in town to talk to his mother. Left alone she might have remained always sensibly silent but they would not let her alone. Women could not let each other alone as men did. They are not as sensible and brave. If women and younger babes had but stayed away from his mother Tar might have had more of her for himself.
He sat on the box near the door of the barn. Was he glad to be alone? One of those odd things happened that were always happening later when he was grown. A particular scene, a country road climbing over a hill, the yard of a railroad seen from a bridge in a city at night, a grass-grown road leading into a wood, the garden of a deserted tumbled-down house — some scene that, outwardly at least, had no more meaning than a thousand other scenes swept by his eye perhaps on the same day printed itself with the most minutely worked out details on the walls of his mind. The house of his mind had many rooms and each room was a mood. On the walls pictures were hung. He had hung them there. Why? Some inner sense of selection had perhaps been at work.
There was the open barn doors making a frame for his picture. Back of him, in the shed-like entrance to the barn, was, on the one side, the blank barn wall up which the ladder climbed to the loft above and up which the girls had gone. On the wall were wooden pegs on which hung work harnesses, horse collars, a row of iron horse shoes and a saddle and on the opposite walls were openings through which horses, standing in their stalls, could thrust their heads.
A rat came from some unknown place and ran quickly across the earthen floor to disappear under a farm wagon at the back of the shed and an old grey horse, her head thrust through one of the openings, looked at Tar with sad impersonal eyes.
And so there he was, for the first time thrust out alone into the world. How isolated he felt! His sister, in the face of all her grown-up mother-manner, had reneged on her job. She had been told to remember he was a babe and had not remembered.
Well, he was no longer a babe and was resolved he would not cry. He sat stoically staring out through the open barn doors at the scene before him.
What a strange scene. It was thus that later hero of Tar’s, Robinson Crusoe, must have felt when he found himself alone on his isle. What a vast world this into which he had been thrust. So many trees, hills, fields. Suppose he were to arise from his box and begin to walk. At one corner of the frame opening through which he looked was a small section of the white farm house into which the women had gone. Tar could not hear their voices. Now he could not hear the voices of the two girls in the loft. They had disappeared through a dark hole over his head. Occasionally there was a buzzing whisper and then girlish laughter. It was really giggling. Perhaps every one in the world had gone away into some strange dark hole leaving him sitting there in the midst of a vast empty space. Terror had begun to take hold of him. In the far distance, as he looked out through the barn doors, were hills and as he sat gazing a tiny black dot appeared in the sky. The dot grew slowly larger and larger. What seemed to him a long time passed and the dot grew into a great bird, a hawk wheeling and circling in the vast sky over his head.
Tar sat staring at the hawk moving slowly, in great circles, up in the sky. In the barn at his back the head of the old horse was withdrawn and then appeared again. Now the horse had taken a mouthful of hay and was eating. The rat, that had run into some dark hole under the wagon at the back of the shed, came forth and began creeping toward him. What shining little eyes! Tar was about to cry out but now the rat had found what he wanted. An ear of corn lay on the barn floor and he began gnawing at it. His sharp little teeth made a soft grinding sound.
Time passed slowly, oh so slowly. What a trick Tar’s sister has played on him. Why were she and the farm girl, named Elsa, so silent now? Had they gone away? In another part of the barn, somewhere in the darkness back of the horse, something began to stir about making a rustling sound in the straw on the barn floor. The old barn was full of rats.
Tar got off his box and went softly out through the barn doors into the warm sunlight and toward the house. In a meadow near the house some sheep were pastured and one of them raised its head to look at him.
Now all of the sheep were looking, were staring. In an orchard beyond the barns and the house there was a red cow that also raised her head to stare. What strange impersonal eyes.
Tar hurried across the farm yard and to the door through which the two women had gone but it was closed. Inside the house also there was silence. He had been left alone for perhaps five minutes. It seemed to him hours.
He pounded at the back door with his fists but there was no answer. The women had only gone upstairs in the house but it seemed to him they must have gone far away — that his sister and the farm girl had gone far away.
Everything had gone far away. Looking up into the sky he could see the hawk circling now far above. The circles grew larger and larger and then suddenly the hawk flew straight away into the blue. When Tar had seen him first he was a tiny dot, no larger than a fly, and now he was becoming like that again. As he looked the black dot grew smaller and smaller. It wavered and danced before his eyes and then disappeared.
He was alone in the farm yard. Now the sheep and the cow were no longer looking at him but were eating grass. He went to the fence and stood looking at the sheep. How contented and happy they seemed. The grass they ate must be delicious to the taste. For each sheep plenty of other sheep, for the cow the warm barn at night and the company of other cows. The two women in the house had each other, his sister Margaret had the farm girl Elsa, the boy of the farm had his father, a hired man, the work horses and the dog he had seen trotting at the horses’ heels.
Tar only was alone in the world. Why was he not born a sheep to be with other sheep and eat grass? Now he was not afraid, only lonely and sad.
He went slowly across the barn yard and along the green lane the men, the boys and the horses had followed. He cried a little, softly, as he went. Th
e grass in the lane was soft and cool under his bare feet and in the distance he could see blue hills and beyond the hills a blue cloudless sky.
The lane which seemed so long to him that day was very short. There was a small woodlot through which it passed to the fields beyond — fields lying in a long flat valley through which a creek ran — and in the woods the trees threw blue shadows on the grass-covered roadway.
How cool and quiet in the woods. A passion Tar had in him all his life may have begun on that day. In the woods he stopped and for what seemed to him a long time sat on the ground beneath a tree. Ants were running here and there and then disappearing into holes in the ground, birds flew about in the branches of the trees and two spiders, who at his approach had hidden themselves away, came out again and worked at the business of spinning webs.
If Tar had been crying when he came into the woods he had stopped now. His mother was very very far away. He might never find her again but if he did not it was her own fault. She had put him out of her arms to take up another and younger member of the family. The neighbor woman, who was she? She had shoved him off on his sister who had, after issuing an absurd command about sitting on a box, promptly forgotten him. There was the world of boys but at the moment boys meant his older brother John, who more than once had shown his scorn of Tar’s society, and such people as the farm boy who had ridden away on a horse without bothering to speak to him or even to give him a parting look.
“Very well,” Tar thought, filled with bitter resentment, “if I am shut out from one world there is another.”
The ants at his feet were happy enough. What a fascinating world that in which they lived. The ants were darting up into the light out of a hole in the ground and were building a little mountain of grains of sand. Other ants went on voyages out into the world and returned bearing burdens. An ant was dragging a dead fly along the ground. There was a stick in his way and now the wings of the fly had caught against the stick and he could not move it. He ran crazily about, pulling now at the stick, now at the fly. A bird flew down off a nearby tree and lighting on a fallen log looked at Tar and far off in the woods, through an opening between trees, a squirrel came down the trunk of a tree and began running on the ground.
The bird was looking at Tar, the squirrel stopped running and sat up straight to look and the ant that could not move the fly made frantic signs with his tiny hair-like feelers.
Had Tar been received into the world of nature? Vast plans had begun to form in his head. He had noticed that the sheep in the field by the farm house ate grass eagerly. Why should he not eat grass? Ants lived warm and snug in a hole in the ground. There were many ants, all apparently of one age and size, in one family, and, after Tar had found his own hole and had eaten much grass so that he had become big like a sheep — or even like a horse or cow — he would find others of his kind.
There was, he had no doubt, a language of sheep, of squirrels, of ants. Now the squirrel had begun to chatter and the bird on the log called and was answered by another bird away somewhere in the woods.
The bird flew away. The squirrel disappeared. They had gone to join their comrades. Tar alone had no comrade.
Leaning over he lifted the stick so that his tiny brother the ant could go on about his affairs and then, getting down on all fours, he put his ear near the ant hill to see if he could hear the talk.
He could hear nothing. Well, he was too large. Far away from others of his own kind he seemed to himself big and strong. Along the lane he went, walking now on all fours like a sheep, and got to the log where but a moment before the bird had been sitting.
The log was hollow at one end and it was obvious that with a little effort he could crawl into it. He would have a place into which to go at night. Of a sudden it seemed to him that he had got into a world in which he could move freely about, in which he could live freely and happily.
[He] decided it was time for him to go and eat grass. Walking along the roadway through the wood he came to a lane that led down into a valley. In a distant field the two men, driving the two horses, each hitched to a cultivator, were plowing corn. The corn came up to the horses’ knees. The farm boy was riding one of the horses. At the heels of the other horse the farm dog trotted. From the distance, it seemed to Tar [that] the horses looked no larger than the sheep he had seen in the field by the house.
He stood by a fence looking at the men and horses in the field and at the boy on the horse. Well, the farm boy was grown up — he moved in a world of men while Tar was left to the women. But he had renounced the woman’s world, he would go at once into a warm comfortable world — the world of animal life.
Getting down on all fours again he began crawling on the soft grass that grew near the fence beside the lane. White clover grew among the grass and first of all he bit off one of the clover blossoms. It did not taste badly and he ate another and another. How many would he have to eat, how much grass would he have to consume before he grew big like a horse or even like a sheep? He kept crawling about, biting at the grass, but the edges of the grass blades were sharp and hurt his lips. When he had [chewed] a mouthful of the grass it was strange and bitter to the taste.
He persisted but something within kept warning him that what he was doing was ridiculous and that if his sister or his brother John knew he would be laughed at and so from time to time he arose and looked back along the road through the woods to be sure no one was coming. Then getting again to his hands and knees he crawled over the grass. As it was difficult to tear the grass with his teeth he used his hands. The grass had to be chewed until it was soft before it could be swallowed and how nasty it tasted.
How hard to grow up! Tar’s dream of growing suddenly big by eating grass was fading and he closed his eyes. With his eyes closed he could do a trick he sometimes did in his bed at night. He could in fancy re-create his own body, make his legs and arms long, his shoulders broad. With his eyes closed he could be anything he pleased, be a horse trotting through the streets, a tall man walking in a road. He could be a bear in the dense forest, a prince living in a castle with slaves to bring his food, could be the son of a grocer and rule over a household of women.
He sat on the grass with his eyes closed pulling grass and trying to eat it. The green juice of the grass had discolored his lips and chin. Now surely he had begun growing larger. Already he had eaten two, three, half a dozen mouthfuls of the grass. After two or three more he would open his eyes and see what he had accomplished. Perhaps he would already have the legs of a horse. The thought frightened him a little but he put out his hand and tearing loose more of the grass put it in his mouth.
Something dreadful happened. Jumping quickly to his feet Tar ran two or three steps and then sat quickly down. In reaching for the last handful of grass he had captured a bee, sucking honey out of one of the clover blossoms, and had carried it to his lips. The bee [had] stung him on the lip and then a convulsive moment of his hand had half crushed the insect and it had been thrown aside. He could see it lying on the grass struggling to arise and fly away. Its broken wings beat the air madly and it made a loud buzzing sound.
The most terrible pain had come to Tar. He put his hand to his lip and rolling over on his back closed his eyes and screamed. As the pain grew in intensity his screams grew louder and louder.
Why had he come away from his mother? The sky into which he now looked, when he dared open his eyes, was empty and he had wandered away from all things human into an empty world. The world of crawling and flying things, the world of animals that went on all fours, he had thought so warm and safe, had now become dark and threatening. The little struggling winged beast on the grass nearby was but one of a vast army of winged things surrounding him on all sides. He wanted to get to his feet and run back through the wood and toward the women in the farm house but did not dare move.
There was nothing to do but this humiliating business of screaming and so, lying on his back in the lane and keeping his eyes closed, Tar continued screaming for
what seemed to him hours. Now his lip was burning and was becoming large. He could feel it throbbing and pulsating with growth under his fingers. Growth then was a thing of terror and pain. What a fearful world, this into which he had been born.
Tar did not want to grow big like a horse or a man. He wanted someone to come. The world of growth was too empty and lonely. Now his screams were broken by sobs. Would no one ever come?
There was the sound of running feet in the lane. Two men, accompanied by the dog and the boy, had come from the field, the women had come from the house and the girls from the barn. All were running and calling to Tar but he did not dare look. When the farm woman reached him and had taken him into her arms he still kept his eyes closed and presently stopped screaming although his sobs came harder than ever.
There was a hurried consultation, many voices talking at once, and then one of the men stepped forward and lifting his head from the woman’s shoulder forced Tar’s hand away from his face.
“Why, look,” he said, “the little rabbit has been eating grass and has been stung by a bee.”
The farmer laughed, the hired man and the farm boy laughed and Tar’s sister and the farm girl shrieked with delight.
Tar kept his eyes closed and it seemed to him that the sobs that now shook his body went deeper and deeper. There was a place, far down inside, where the sobs started and it hurt more than his swollen lip. If the grass he had so painfully swallowed were now making something inside him grow and burn as his lip had grown how terrible that would be.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 125