Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  What Tar achieved [by pressing the soft pillow against his ear, by burying his face in the worn pillow] was a sense of nearness to his mother. She could not be in the next room groaning. Where was she? Birth was a thing belonging to the world of pigs, [to] cows and horses[and to other women]. What was happening in the next room was not happening to her. His own breath, after his face had been for a few moments buried in the pillow, made [it] a warm place. The dreary sound of the rain outside the house, the booming sound of the doctor’s voice, the queer apologetic voice of his father, the neighbor woman’s voice — all sounds were shut out. His mother had gone away somewhere but he could hold onto his [own] thoughts of her. It was a trick his illness had taught him.

  Once or twice, since he had been old enough to be conscious of such things, and in particular since he had been ill, his mother had taken him into her arms and had pressed his face [down thus] against her body. That was at a moment when the younger baby in the house was asleep. If there were no babies it would happen oftener.

  With his face buried in the pillow, his arms embracing it, he achieved the illusion.

  [Well, he] did not want his mother to have another baby. He did not want her lying groaning in a bed. He wanted her in the dark [front] room with himself.

  In fancy he [could bring] her there. When you have an illusion hang on[to it].

  Tar hung on grimly. Time passed. When at last he lifted his face from the pillow all was quiet in the house. The silence frightened him a little. Now he thought himself quite convinced nothing had happened.

  He went softly to the bedroom door and opened it softly.

  There was a lamp on a table and his mother was lying in the bed with her eyes closed. She was very white. Dick Moorehead was in the kitchen sitting in a chair by the stove. He had got wet going out into the rain and was drying his clothes.

  The neighbor woman had water in a pan and was washing something.

  Tar stood by the door until the new baby cried. It had to be dressed now. Now it would begin to wear clothes. It would not be like a little pig, a puppy, a kitten. Its clothes would not grow on it. It would have to be taken care of, dressed, washed. After a time it would begin to dress itself, wash itself. Tar already did that.

  Now he could accept the fact of the new baby. It was the matter of being born he could not bear. Now it was done. [Nothing to do about it now.]

  He stood by the door trembling and when the baby cried his mother opened her eyes. It had cried before but with the pillow pressed against his ears Tar had not heard. His father sitting in the kitchen did not move [or look up]. He sat staring at the lighted stove[, a discouraged looking figure]. Steam arose from his [wet] clothes.

  Nothing moved but the eyes of Tar’s mother and he did not know whether or not she saw him standing there. The eyes seemed to be looking reproachfully at him and he backed softly out of the room into the darkness [of the front room].

  In the morning Tar went into the bedroom with John, Robert and Margaret. Margaret went at once to the new baby. She kissed it. Tar did not look. He, John and Robert stood at the foot of the bed and said nothing. There was something stirring, under the covers, beside the mother. They were told it was a boy.

  They went outside. After the rain of the night the morning was bright and clear. Fortunately for John a boy of his own age came along the street and he called to him and hurried off.

  Robert went into the woodshed at the back of the house. He had [some sort of] business going on in there with wooden blocks.

  Well, he was all right and so was Tar [now]. The worst was over. Dick Moorehead would go uptown and into a saloon. He had been through a hard night and would want a drink. While he was drinking he would tell the bartender the news and the bartender would smile. John would tell the neighbor boy. It might be he already knew. Such news travels fast in a small town. [For a few days] the boys and the father would alike be [half] ashamed, [with] a kind of queer secret shame, and then it would pass off.

  In time they would [all] accept the new baby as one of themselves.

  Tar was weak from his night’s adventure but so also was his mother. John and Robert felt the same way. [It had been a strange hard night in the house and now that it was over Tar was relieved.] He wouldn’t have to think about it [again]. A baby is just a baby but [to a boy] an unborn baby in the house is something [he is glad to see come out into the light].

  PART II

  CHAPTER VI

  HENRY FULTON WAS a thick-shouldered, thick-headed boy much larger than Tar. They lived in the same part of an Ohio town and when Tar went to school he had to walk right past the Fulton place. There was a small frame house, on the bank of a creek and near a bridge, and back of it, in the little valley made by the creek, was a corn field and a thicket of uncleared land. Henry’s mother was a stout red-faced woman who went about the back yard in her bare feet. Her husband drove a dray. Tar could go to school another way. He could walk along a railroad embankment or go clear around by the waterworks pond, nearly a half mile out of the way.

  The railroad embankment was fun. There was a certain risk. Tar had to cross the railroad bridge, built high up over the creek, and when he was in the middle of it he looked down. Then he glanced nervously up and down the tracks and shivers ran through his body. What if a train should come? He planned what he would do. Well, he would lie flat on the tracks, letting the train pass over him. A boy at school had told him of another boy who did that. It took nerve, I tell you. You have to lie flat as a pancake and must not move a muscle.

  And so along comes the train. The engineer sees you but cannot stop his train. It rushes on. If you keep your nerve now what a tale you will have to tell. Not so many boys have been run over by trains and not got a scratch either. Sometimes when Tar went to school by the railroad embankment he almost wished a train would come. It should be a fast passenger train going at sixty miles an hour. There is a thing called “suction” you have to watch out for. Tar and a boy friend at school had discussed that. “There was a boy once who stood close beside the tracks when the train went through. He got too close. The suction drew him right under the train. Suction is a thing that pulls at you. It hasn’t got any hands but you’d better look out.”

  Why had Henry Fulton got it in for Tar? John Moorehead walked right past his house, never thinking. Even little Robert Moorehead, who was now in the baby room, the primary, went that way without thinking anything about it. Whether or not Henry really wanted to punch Tar was the question. How could Tar tell? When Henry saw Tar he shouted and made for him. Henry had strange-looking small grey eyes. His hair was red and stood straight up on his head and when he rushed at Tar he laughed and the laugh gave Tar the shivers, like walking over the railroad bridge.

  About the suction now, when you have been caught walking across a railroad bridge. When the train is coming you want to tuck your shirt down tight inside your pants. If an end of your shirt sticks up it catches on some whirling thing under the train and you are drawn right up. Talk about sausage!

  The best part is when the train has passed. At last the engineer has stopped his engine. The passengers climb off. Everyone is pale, of course. Tar would lie still for a little while because now he wasn’t scared. He would fool ’em a little just for a joke. When they got to where he was, the white anxious people, up he would jump and walk off as cool as a cucumber. The story would get all over town. After that happened, if a boy like Henry Fulton took after him, there would always be a big boy around to take Tar’s part. “Well, he’s got moral courage, that’s it. It’s a thing generals have in battle. They don’t fight. Sometimes they are little fellows. You could put Napoleon Bonaparte in the neck of a bottle — almost.”

  Tar knew a lot about “moral courage” because his father often spoke of it. It’s something like suction. You couldn’t describe it or see it but it was as strong as a horse.

  As it was Tar might have asked John Moorehead to take his part against Henry [Fulton] but after all he couldn’t.
You can’t let on about things like that to an older brother.

  There was another thing he might do about being run over by a train, if he had the nerve. He might wait until the train was almost upon him. Then he could drop through between two of the railroad ties and hang by his hands like a bat. Maybe that would be the best way.

  The house in which the Mooreheads now lived was larger than any during Tar’s time. Things had changed. Tar’s mother caressed her children more than she used to, she talked more and Dick Moorehead spent more time at home. Nowdays he was always taking some of the children with him when he went house or sign painting on Saturdays. He drank some but not so much as he did, just enough to make him talk well. It didn’t take much for that.

  As for Tar, he was now all right. He was in the third room at school. Robert was in the primary. There had been two new babies, little Fern, who died within a month after she was born, Will, still a baby almost, and Joe. Although Tar did not know it Fern was to be the last baby born to the family. For some reason, and although he had always resented Robert, Will and the baby Joe were great fun. Tar even liked to take care of Joe, not too often but now and then. You could tickle his toes and he made the funniest sounds. It made you laugh to think you had once been like that, couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk about, had to have someone feed you.

  A boy could not understand older people most of the time, no use trying. Sometimes Tar’s parents were one way, sometimes another. If he depended on his mother it wouldn’t work. She had babies and had to think about them, after they came. The first two or three years a baby isn’t any good, while a horse, big as he is, can work and everything when he is three.

  Sometimes Tar’s father was all right and then again he was all wrong. When Tar and Robert went with him, sign painting on fences on Saturdays, and when there were no older people about he was o. K. Sometimes he told about the battle of Vicksburg. He really won the battle. Well, anyway he told General Grant what to do and he did it but afterward General Grant never gave Dick any credit. The fact is that after the city was won General Grant left Tar’s father out West with the army of occupation while he took General Sherman, Sheridan and a lot of other officers with him down East, and let them have chances Dick never had. Dick never even got promoted. He was a captain before the battle of Vicksburg and a captain afterwards. It would have been better if he had never told General Grant how to win the battle. If Grant had taken Dick down East he wouldn’t have been so long licking General Lee. Dick would have thought up a plan. He did think up one but he never told anyone.

  “I tell you what. If you tell another man how to do something and he does it and it works then, afterwards, he doesn’t like you much. He wants all the credit for himself. As though there weren’t enough to go around. That’s the way men are.”

  Dick Moorehead was all right when there were no other men about but let another man come along and then what? They talked and talked, about nothing mostly. You never got hardly any sign painting done.

  The best thing, Tar thought, would be to have a friend who was another boy nearly ten years older. Tar was smart. He had skipped a whole grade in school already and he could skip another grade if he wanted to. Maybe he would. The best thing would be to have a boy friend who was strong as an ox but dumb. Tar would get his lessons for him and he would do Tar’s fighting. Well, in the morning he would come around Tar’s way to go to school with him. Tar and he would walk right past Henry Fulton’s house. Henry had better keep out of sight.

  Older people got strange ideas into their heads. When Tar was in the first grade at school, the primary (he stayed there only two or three weeks because his mother had taught him his letters and how to read when he was sick that time ) when he was in the primary Tar told a lie. He said he did not throw a stone that broke a window in the school house when everyone knew he did.

  Tar said he did not do it and stuck to the lie. What a fuss was made. The teacher came to the Moorehead house to talk to Tar’s mother. What everyone said was that if he would confess, own up, he would feel better.

  Tar had stuck it out for a long time. He wasn’t allowed to go to school for three days. How strangely his mother acted, so unreasonable. You wouldn’t have expected it from her. He would go into the house all cheered up to see if she had forgotten the whole nonsensical business but she never had. She agreed with the teacher that if he would own up everything would be all right. Even Margaret got to talking that way. John had more sense. He kept out of it, never said a word.

  And it was all foolishness. Finally Tar did own up. The truth was that by that time there had been such a fuss made that he could not rightly remember whether he had thrown the stone or not. And what if he did? What of it? Another glass had already been put in the window. It was only a small stone. Tar wasn’t throwing at the window. That was the whole point.

  If he owned up to a thing like that he got credit for something he never intended doing at all.

  Tar had finally confessed. Of course he had felt badly during the three days. No one knew how he did feel. What you’ve got at such a time is moral courage and that’s what people can’t understand. When everyone is against you what are you going to do? Sometimes, during the three days, he cried when no one was looking.

  It was his mother who really got him to own up. He was sitting with her on the back porch and she said again that if he would own up he would feel all right. How had she known he wasn’t feeling all right?

  He did own up, all of a sudden, without thinking.

  Then his mother was satisfied, the teacher was satisfied, everyone was satisfied. After he had told what they thought was the truth he went out to the barn. His mother had put her arms about him but that one time her arms did not feel so good. It was better not to tell a he like that when everyone is going to make such a fuss [about it] [but] after you have told it.... Anyway, during the three days; everyone had found out something. Tar could stick to a thing when he had made up his mind.

  The best part of the place where the Mooreheads now lived was that it had a barn. Of course there wasn’t any horse or cow but a barn is a barn.

  After Tar confessed that time he went out to the barn and crawled up into the empty loft. What an empty feeling inside too — the lie gone. When he was holding out even Margaret, who had to go and preach, had a kind of admiration for him. If, when Tar grew to be a man, he ever became a great criminal like Jesse James or someone and got caught, they would never get any confession out of him. He had made up his mind to that. He would defy them all. “Well, go ahead, hang me then.” As he stood upon the gallows he would smile and wave his hand. If they let him he would wear his Sunday suit — all white. “Ladies and gentlemen, I, the notorious Jesse James, am about to die. I’ve something I want to say. You think you can make me come down off my perch. Well, try it.

  “You can all go to hell, that’s where you can go.”

  That’s the way to do a thing like that. Grown people have such mixed-up ideas. There are a lot of things they never get straight.

  When you have a boy friend ten years older who is stout but dumb you are all right. There was a boy named Elmer Cowley Tar thought might almost have done for the place but he was too dumb. And then besides he never paid any attention to Tar. He wanted to be John’s friend but John would not have him. “Ah, he’s a block-head,” John said. If he hadn’t been quite so dumb and had taken a notion to Tar it might have been just the thing.

  The trouble with a boy like that, who was too dumb, was that he would never get the point. Let Henry Fulton get after Tar when they were going to school in the morning and like as not Elmer would only laugh. If Henry really started pounding Tar he might rush in but that wasn’t the point either. Pounding isn’t the worst part. It’s expecting to be pounded that is the worst of all. If a boy isn’t smart enough to know that, what good is he?

  The trouble with going around by the railroad bridge or by the waterworks pond was that it made Tar out a coward to himself. What if no one knew?
What difference did that make?

  Henry Fulton had a gift Tar would have given much to possess. The chances were he only wanted to scare Tar because Tar had caught up with him in school. Henry was nearly two years older, but they were both in the same room and both by ill luck lived at the same end of town.

  About Henry’s special gift. He was a born “butter.” Some are born that way. Tar wished he had been. Henry could put down his head and run against anything and it did not seem to hurt his head at all.

  In the school house yard there was a high board fence and Henry could stand back and take a flying run, hitting the fence with all his might and afterwards only smile. You could hear the boards of the fence crack. Once, at home in the barn, Tar gave the thing a trial. He did not run full speed and afterwards he was glad he didn’t. His head was sore enough as it was. If you haven’t a gift you haven’t it. You might as well give the matter up.

  The only gift Tar had was that he was smart. It isn’t anything at all to get such lessons as they give you in school. There are always a lot of dumb boys in your class and the whole class has to wait for them. If you’ve got any sense you don’t have to work much. It isn’t any fun though to be smart. What good does it do?

  A boy like Henry Fulton had more fun than a dozen smart boys. At the recess time all the other boys gathered around. Tar kept in the background only because Henry had got that notion of taking after him.

  In the school yard there was a high board fence. At the recess time the girls played on one side the fence, the boys on the other. Margaret was over there on the other side with the girls. On the fence the boys drew pictures. They threw stones and, in the wintertime], snowballs over the fence.

  What Henry Fulton did was to knock loose one of the boards with his head. Some older boys put him up to it. Henry was really dumb. He would have been a good one to be Tar’s friend, the best one in school, counting the talent he had, but it wasn’t to be.