Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  Tar tried scolding [Hog], trying to get his ten cents back, and that gave the old man a chance to laugh [at him]. In John’s day the laugh had been on the other side of the fence.

  [And] then something happened. Spring came and there was a long rainy time. One night a bridge got washed out east of town and the morning train did not come. At the station it was marked first three hours late and then five. The afternoon train was due at four thirty and on a late March afternoon in Ohio, when it is raining and the clouds hang low, it is pretty near dark by five.

  Tar went down to see about the trains at six and then went home to supper. He went again at seven and at nine. No trains all day. The telegraph operator told him he had better go [on] home and forget it and he did go home thinking he would go to bed but Margaret got on her ear.

  What was the matter with her Tar didn’t know. She didn’t usually act as she did that night. John had come home from work tired and had gone to bed. Mary Moorehead, pale and sick-looking, went to bed early. It wasn’t very cold but the rain fell steadily and it was dark as pitch outside. Maybe the calendar said it should have been a moonlight night. The electric lights were turned off all over town.

  It wasn’t that Margaret was trying to tell Tar what he should do about his job. She was just nervous and excited, without any reason, and said she knew that if she went to bed she couldn’t sleep. Girls get that way sometimes. It might have been the spring coming on. “Ah, let’s sit up until a train does come and then let’s take the papers around,” she kept saying. They were in the kitchen and the mother must have gone to sleep in her room. She never said a word. Margaret put on John’s raincoat and his rubber boots. Tar had on a ponchoon. He could put his papers under it and keep them pretty dry.

  They went to the station that night at ten and again at eleven.

  There wasn’t a soul on Main Street. Even the night watchman had hid himself away. [It was a night when even a thief wouldn’t be out.] The telegraph operator had to stay but he had a grouch. After Tar asked him about the train three or four times he wouldn’t answer. Well, he wanted to be at home in bed. Everyone did but Margaret. She had infected Tar with her nervousness [and excitement].

  When they went to the station at eleven they decided to stay. “If we go home again like as not we’ll wake mother up,” Margaret said. In the station there was a fat country woman sitting on a bench asleep with her mouth open. They had left a light burning [in there] but it was pretty dim. A woman like that would be going to see her daughter in another town, a daughter who was sick or going to have a baby or something. Country people don’t travel much. When they make up their minds they’ll stand anything. Start them and you can’t stop them. There was a woman in Tar’s town went clear out to Kansas to see her daughter and she took along all her own food and sat up in the day coach all the way. Tar heard her tell about it once in a store when she got back home.

  The train got in at half past one. The baggage master and the ticket man had gone home and the telegraph operator did their work. He had to stay up anyway. He thought Tar and his sister had gone crazy. “Hey, you crazy kids. What does anyone in the world care whether or not they get a paper this time a night? You ought to be spanked and sent off to bed, the both of you.” The telegraph operator had a grouch that night [all right].

  Margaret was all right and so was Tar. Now that he had got into it Tar enjoyed staying up as much as his sister. On a night like that you are sleepy and sleepy, so you think you can’t stand it another minute, and then suddenly you aren’t sleepy at all. It’s like getting your second wind when you are running a race.

  A town at night, away after midnight and when it’s raining, is different from a town in the day or in the early evening when it’s dark but the people in the houses are all awake. When Tar went around with his papers on ordinary evenings he had a lot of short-cuts he always took. Well, he knew where they had dogs, knew how to save a lot of ground. He went through alley-ways, climbed fences. Most people did not care. When a boy went around that way he saw a lot of things going on. Tar had seen other things besides that time when be saw Win Connell and his new wife cutting up.

  That night, with Margaret along, he wondered whether he would go his regular way or keep to the sidewalks. As though sensing what was going on in his mind Margaret wanted to go the shortest and darkest way.

  It was fun, puddling about in the rain and darkness, going up to dark houses, slipping the paper under a door or back of a blind. Old Mrs. Stevens lived alone and was afraid of disease. She had some money and had another old woman working for her. She was always afraid of taking cold and when it was winter or cold weather she paid Tar an extra five cents a week and he took the paper in the kitchen and held it over the kitchen stove. When it was warm and dry the old woman who worked in the kitchen ran with it into the front room. There was a box on the front door of the house to keep the paper dry in wet weather. Tar told Margaret about it and she laughed.

  All kinds of people in a town, having all kinds of notions, and now they were all asleep. When they came to a house Margaret stood outside while Tar crept up and put the paper in the dryest place he could find. He knew most of the dogs [and anyway,] that night the ugly ones were inside out of the rain.

  Everyone inside out of the rain but Tar and Margaret, all asleep, cuddled up in beds. If you let yourself go you could imagine just how they looked. When Tar was going around alone he often spent his time trying to imagine what was going on in houses. He could pretend the houses had no walls. It was a good way to put in the time.

  Walls of houses could not hide things from [him] more than a dark night like that. When Tar came back from taking a paper into a house and when Margaret was waiting outside he could not see her. Sometimes she hid behind a tree. He called to her in a loud whisper. Then she came out and they laughed.

  They came to a short-cut that Tar hardly ever took at night except when it was warm and clear. It was right through the cemetery, not on the Farley-Thompson side but the other way.

  You got over a fence and went between the graves. Then you crawled over another fence and through an orchard and you were out in another street.

  Tar told Margaret about the cemetery short-cut just to tease her. She had been so bold, had wanted to do everything. He just thought he would try her out and was surprised and a little upset when she took him up.

  “Oh, come on. Let’s do it,” she said. After that there wasn’t anything else Tar could do.

  They found the place and got over the fence and there they were right in among the graves. They kept stumbling over stones but they didn’t laugh now. Margaret was sorry she had been so bold. She crept close to Tar and took hold of his hand. It had got darker and darker. They couldn’t see even the white gravestones.

  That was where it happened. Hog Hawkins lived out that way. His hog yard backed right up against the orchard they had to cross after they got out of the cemetery.

  They had got almost through and Tar was going ahead, hanging onto Margaret’s hand and trying to find his way, when they almost fell over Hog kneeling over a grave.

  They didn’t know who it was, not at first. When they were almost on top of him he groaned and they stopped. At first they thought it was a ghost. Why they didn’t both cut and run they never knew. They were too scared[, maybe].

  They both stood trembling and clinging to each other and there came a stroke of lightning and Tar saw who it was. It was the only stroke of lightning that night and after it passed there wasn’t hardly any thunder at all, just a low rumbling sound.

  A low rumbling sound far off in the darkness somewhere and a groan from the man kneeling by the grave, almost at Tar’s feet. The old hog buyer had been unable to sleep that night and had come out to the graveyard, to his wife’s grave, to pray. Perhaps he did it every night when he could not sleep. That might have been the reason he lived in a house so near the graveyard.

  A man like that, never having liked but one person, never having been liked by
but one person. They had married and then she had died. Nothing after that but [lonesomeness]. He had got so he hated people and wanted to die. Well, he was pretty sure his wife had gone to Heaven. He wanted to get in there [too] if he could. If she was in Heaven she might say a word for him. He was pretty sure she would.

  Suppose he died some night in his house, not a living thing about but some hogs. In the town there was a story. Everyone told it. A farmer came to town looking for the hog buyer. He met Charlie Durlam, the postmaster, who pointed out the house. “You will find him down there. You can tell him from the hogs because he wears a hat.”

  The graveyard had become the hog buyer’s church to which he went at night. To belong to a regular church would imply some kind of understanding with other people. He would have to give money now and then. It cost nothing to go at night into a graveyard.

  Tar and Margaret went softly out of the presence of the kneeling man. After the one flash of lightning it was black dark but Tar managed to find the way to the fence and got Margaret over and into the orchard. Soon they were out on another street, both shaken and afraid. From the street they could hear the moaning voice of the hog buyer coming out of the darkness.

  They hurried over the rest of Tar’s route, keeping to the streets and sidewalks. Now Margaret wasn’t so frisky. When they got to the Moorehead house [she] tried to fight a lamp in the kitchen and her hands trembled. Tar had to take the match and do the job. Margaret was pale. Tar might have laughed at her but wasn’t so sure how he looked himself. When they had gone upstairs and to bed Tar was awake for a long time. It was good to get into bed with John, who had the bed all warm and who never woke up.

  Tar had made up his mind to something but thought it just as well not to tell John. The battle the Mooreheads had been having with Hog Hawkins was John’s battle, not his. He was out ten cents but what is ten cents?

  He did not want the baggage man to know, did not want the express man or any of the people who habitually hung around the railroad station when the train came in to know that he had surrendered.

  He had made up his mind to have it out with Hog Hawkins the very next day and did. He waited until there wasn’t anyone looking and then went to where the man stood waiting.

  Tar thrust out the paper and Hog Hawkins grabbed it. He made a bluff at fishing in his pockets for the pennies but of course he didn’t find [any]. He wasn’t going to miss a chance like that. “Well, well, I forgot the change. You’ll have to wait.” When he said it he chuckled. He was sorry none of the men around the station had seen what had happened, how he had caught one of the Moorehead boys off guard.

  Well, a victory was a victory.

  He went off along the street clutching the paper and chuckling. Tar stood watching.

  If Tar lost two cents a day three or four times a week it wouldn’t amount to much. Now and then some traveling man got off a train and gave him a nickel, saying, “Keep the change.” Two cents a day wasn’t so much. Tar thought he could stand it. He thought of Hog Hawkins getting his little moments of satisfaction, beating him out of papers, and made up his mind he would let him.

  [That is,] he would, [he thought,] when there weren’t too many people about.

  CHAPTER XIX

  [HOW IS A boy to figure things out? Happenings in Tar’s town as in all town’s.] Now [Tar] was growing large of body — tall and leggy. People were less conscious of him as a child. He went to ball games, to shows at the opera house.

  There was a life going on outside his town. The train that brought the papers from the east went on west.

  Life in the town was simple. There were no rich people. In the evening, in the summer, he saw couples walking under the trees. They were young men and women almost grown. Sometimes they kissed. When Tar saw it he became excited.

  There weren’t any bad women in town, except maybe....

  To the east Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Boston, New York. To the west Chicago.

  A negro, son of the only negro in town, came to visit his father. He talked in the barber shop — in the livery barn. It was spring and all winter he had lived at Springfield, Ohio.

  During the Civil War Springfield had been one of the stations on the underground railroad — abolitionists running off niggers. Tar’s father knew all about that. Zanesville was another — and Oberlin, near Cleveland.

  All such places had niggers yet — lots of them.

  In Springfield there was a place called “the levee.” Nigger prostitutes mostly. The nigger who came to town to visit his father told about it in the livery stable. He was a strong young fellow who wore loud flashy clothes. All winter he had been in Springfield and two nigger women had kept him. They went out into the streets, made money and brought it to him.

  “They better had. I wouldn’t stand for no foolishness.

  “Knock ’em down. Treat ’em rough. That’s my way.”

  The young negro’s father was such a respectable old man. Even Dick Moorehead, who kept all his life the Southerner’s attitude toward niggers, said, “Old Pete’s all right — if he is a nigger.”

  The old negro man worked hard and so did his little dried-up wife. All their children had cut out, gone adventuring where there were other negroes. They rarely came home to visit the old couple and when one did he did not stay long.

  The flashy nigger wouldn’t stay long either. He said as much. “Nothing in this town for a nigger like me. Is a sport, I is.”

  Odd thing — that kind of relationship between men and women — even for niggers — women supporting a man that way. One of the men working at the livery barn said white men and women sometimes did the same thing, The men at the barn and some at the barber shop were envious. “A man doesn’t have to work. Money rolls in.”

  All kinds of things going on in towns and cities where the trains came from, in cities to which the trains go when they go on west.

  Old Pete, the father of the young negro sport, did whitewashing, he worked in people’s gardens, his wife did washing just like Mary Moorehead. On almost any day you could see the old man going through Main Street with his whitewash pail and brushes. He never swore, drank, stole. He was always cheerful, smiling, taking his hat off to white people. On Sundays he and his old wife put on their best clothes and went to the Methodist Church. They both had white kinky hair. Now and then, when there was a prayer going on, you heard the old man’s voice. “Oh, Lord, save me,” he groaned. “Yes, Lord, save me,” echoed the wife.

  Not much like his son, that old black. When he was in town that time [you bet] the flashy young black never went near any church.

  At the Methodist Church, Sunday evenings — girls coming out, young fellows waiting to see them home.

  “May I see you home tonight, Miss Smith?” Trying to be extra polite — speaking soft and low.

  Sometimes a young fellow got the girl he wanted, sometimes he didn’t. When he failed small boys standing about called to him. “Yi! Yi! She wouldn’t let you! Yi! Yi!”

  Children John’s age, Margaret’s age, were betwixt and between. They couldn’t wait in the darkness to yell at [the] older boys nor could they, as yet, stand up before all the others and ask some girl to let them see her home, be asked by some young man.

  To Margaret that might be happening soon now. It wouldn’t be long before John would stand up in the line before the church door with other young men.

  Better to be a [kid] than a betwixt and between.

  Sometimes when a boy yelled “Yi! Yi!” he got caught. An older boy chased and caught him in the dark road — all the others laughing — gave him a clip side the head. Well, what of it? The thing was to take it without crying.

  Then wait.

  When the [older boy] got far enough away — so you felt pretty sure he couldn’t catch you again — you paid him out. “Yi! Yi! She wouldn’t let you. Got left, didn’t you. Yi! Yi!”

  Tar did not want to be a betwixt and between. When he grew up he wanted to grow suddenly — go to bed a boy and wake up
a man, big and strong. Sometimes he dreamed of that.

  He could play ball pretty well, if he only had more time for practise, could hold down second base. The trouble was that the regular team — his age — always played on Saturdays. On Saturday afternoon he was busy selling Sunday papers. A Sunday paper was five cents. You made more than on other days.

  Bill McCarthy came to work at McGovern’s livery stable. He had been a prize fighter, a regular one, but now he was down and out.

  Too much wine and women. He said that himself.

  Well he knew things. He could teach boys how to box, teach them ring generalship. Once he had been sparring partner for Kid McAllister — the Nonpareil. A boy doesn’t get a chance to be around with a man like that — not very often in life.

  Bill got up a class. It was three dollars for five lessons and Tar took. Bill made all the boys pay their money down, in advance. Ten boys went in. They were to be private lessons, one boy at a time, upstairs in the barn.

  They all got what Tar got. It was a dirty trick. Bill sparred a moment with each boy and then — he pretended to let his hand slip — accidentally.

  A boy got a black eye or something like that the first lesson. No one came back for more. Tar didn’t. It was an easy way for Bill. You clip a boy over the head, knock him across a barn floor, and get three dollars — don’t have to bother with the other [four] lessons.

  The ex-prize fighter doing that and the young sporty nigger getting his living that way, on the levee in Springfield, came to about the same thing for Tar.

  CHAPTER XX

  [THINGS ALL MIXED up in a boy’s mind. What is sin? You hear people talking. Some who talk the most about God cheat the most in stores and horse trading.] [In Tar’s town many] men like Lawyer King and Judge Blair did not go to church. Doctor Reefy never went. They were on the square. You could trust them.