Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  Sometimes, when she was at home, she jumped out at Ned like that and sometimes at her father. The mother sat listening. The mother was the kind of woman who never offered an opinion when men were about. Louise said, either to Ned or to the father, “It can’t go on,” she said. The father was a Jeffersonian Democrat. He was counted a keen man in his North Carolina county and was even well known in the State. Once he had served a term in the State Senate. She said, “Father — or Ned — unless all the men under whom I am studying — unless the professors, men who ought to know, the men who have spent their lives studying such things — unless they are all wrong, something is going to happen in America — one of these days — perhaps soon — it may, for that matter, happen all over the Western world. Something is cracking.... Something going.”

  “Cracking?” Ned had a queer feeling. It was almost as though something, perhaps the chair in which he was sitting, was going to give way. “Cracking?” He looked sharply around. Louise had such a damn way.

  “It’s capitalism,” she said.

  Once, she said, in an earlier day, what her father believed might have been all right. Thomas Jefferson, she thought, might have been all right in his day only, “You see, Dad — or Ned — he didn’t count on something.

  “He didn’t count on modern machinery,” she said.

  Louise had in her a lot of talk like that. She disturbed the family. There was a kind of tradition... the position of women and girls in America and particularly in the South... but it also was cracking up. When the father lost most of his money in the stock market he didn’t tell his daughter or his wife and when Louise came home she kept talking. She didn’t know how it hurt. “It’s opening out, you see,” she said, seeming pleased. “We’re going to get it. Middle-class people like us are going to get it now.” The father and the son didn’t much like being called middle-class. They winced. They both loved and admired Louise.

  There was so much that was fine and even splendid in her, they both thought.

  Neither Ned nor the father could quite understand why Louise hadn’t married. They both thought— “God, but she would make some man a good wife.” She was a passionate little thing. To be sure, neither Ned nor the father let that thought quite come up into words. A Southerner — a gentleman — didn’t think — of a sister or of a daughter— “she’s a passionate one — she’s a live one. If you could have such a one as your own, what a beautiful lover she might be!” They didn’t think that. But...

  Sometimes in the evening when the members of the family were sitting on the porch of their house... it was a big old brick house with a wide brick terrace across the front... you could sit there on the summer evenings looking at pine forests on low hills in the distance... the house was almost in the center of town but was on high ground... Ned Sawyer’s grandfather and great-grandfather had lived there. You could look over roofs of other houses into distant hills... neighbors liked to drop in there in the evenings....

  Louise would sit on the edge of her father’s chair with her soft bare arms about his shoulders or she would sit like that on the edge of her brother Ned’s chair. On the summer evenings when he had put on his uniform and was later going down into town to drill his men, she looked at him and laughed at him. “You do look grand in it,” she said, touching his uniform. “If you weren’t my brother I’d fall for you, I swear I would.”

  The trouble with Louise, Ned said sometimes, was that she was always analyzing things. He didn’t like it. He wished she wouldn’t. “I guess,” she said, “it’s us women, falling for you men in your uniforms... you men going out to kill other men... there’s something savage and ugly in us too.

  “There must be something brutal in us too.”

  Louise thought.. she spoke out sometimes... she didn’t want to... she hated to disturb her father and mother... she thought and said that unless things changed rapidly in America, “new dreams,” she said, “growing up to take the place of old hurtful individualistic dreams... dreams become utterly corrupted now — by money,” she said. She grew suddenly serious. “The South will have to pay bitterly,” she said. Sometimes when Louise talked to her father and brother in the evening like that they were both glad there weren’t any others present... people of the town who might have heard her going on....

  It wasn’t any wonder that men, Southern men, the kind you would have expected to be courting such a woman as Louise were a little afraid of her. “Men don’t like an intellectual woman. That’s the truth... only with Louise — if the men had only known — but never mind that—”

  She had queer notions. She had got that way. Sometimes the father answered her almost sharply. He was half angry. “Louise, you’re a damn little red,” he said. He laughed. Just the same — his own daughter — he loved her.

  “The South,” she said, seriously to Ned or the father, “it’ll have to pay and pay bitterly.

  “This old gentleman idea you men down here have built up — the statesman, the soldiers — the man who never works with his own hands — all that sort of thing....

  “Robert E. Lee. An attempt at kindness built into it. It’s sheer patronage. It’s a feeling built on slavery. You know it, Ned — or Father....

  “It’s an idea in us, ingrained in us — sons of good Southern families like Ned here.” She looked sharply at Ned. “Isn’t he perfect in his uniform?” she said. “Such men couldn’t work with their hands — they wouldn’t dare work with their hands. It would be a disgrace, wouldn’t it, Ned?

  “It’s going to come,” she said, and the others grew serious. She was speaking now outside her own class. She was trying to explain to them. “There’s this new thing in the world now. It’s machinery. Your Thomas Jefferson, in his thinking, didn’t count on that, did he, Father? If he were alive to-day perhaps he would say — I’ve a notion — quickly enough — now machinery has thrown all his thoughts into the scrap heap.

  “It’ll begin slowly,” Louise said, “consciousness in labor. They’ll begin more and more to realize that there is no hope for them — looking to people like us.”

  “To us?” the father asked sharply.

  “You mean us?”

  “Yes. We are middle-class, you see. You hate the word, don’t you, Father?”

  The father was annoyed, as Ned was. “Middle-class,” he said contemptuously— “if we’re not first-class, who is?”

  “Just the same, Father — and Ned... you, Father, are a lawyer and Ned’s going to be one. You are the lawyer for the mill people here in this town. Ned hopes to be.”

  There had been, a short time before, a strike in a mill town in the South, in a town in Virginia. Louise Sawyer had gone there.

  She had gone as a student of economics to study what was going on. She had seen something. It concerned a newspaper of the town.

  She had gone with a newspaper man to a strike meeting. Louise moved about among the men freely... they had confidence in her... as she and the newspaper man were leaving a hall, where a strike meeting had been held, a small excited fat little workingwoman had rushed up to the newspaper man.

  The workingwoman was almost tearful, Louise said later, telling her father and brother about it. She had clung to the newspaper man and Louise had stood a little to one side, listening. She had a sharp mind — that Louise. She was a new kind of woman to her father and brother. “The future, God knows, may after all lie with our women,” the father sometimes said to himself. The thought forced itself upon him. He didn’t want to think that. The women had — some of them at least — a way of facing facts.

  The workingwoman in the Virginia town had pleaded with the newspaper man. “Why, oh, why, don’t you give us a fair break? You’re on the Eagle here?” The Eagle was the only daily paper in the Virginia town. “Why don’t you give us a square deal?

  “We’re humans even if we are workers.” The newspaper man had tried to reassure her. “That’s what we want to do — it’s all we want to do,” he said brusquely. He had edged away f
rom the excited little fat woman but afterwards when he was in the street with Louise and Louise had asked him, directly, frankly, in a way she had, “Well, are you giving them a square deal?”

  “Hell, no,” he said, and laughed.

  “What the hell,” he said. “The lawyer for the mill company writes the editorials for our paper and we slaves have to sign them.” He was an embittered man too.

  “Now,” he said to Louise, “don’t squeal on me. I’m telling you. I’d lose my job.”

  *

  “AND SO you see,” Louise said afterwards, talking of the incident to her father and Ned.

  “You mean that we?” That was her father speaking. Ned was listening. The father was hurt. There had been in that tale — told by Louise — something — it had cut in close to the father. You could tell it by looking into his face while Louise was talking.

  Ned Sawyer knew. He knew that his sister Louise — in bringing up such things — he knew she didn’t want to hurt him or his father. Sometimes, when she was at home, she would begin talking thus and then stop. The family might be sitting on the porch of the house on a hot summer evening and birds were chirping in the trees in the yard. You could see over roofs of other houses into distant hills — pine-clad. The country roads in that section of North Carolina were red and yellow as in Red Oliver’s Georgia country. There was the low night call of bird to bird. Louise would begin to talk and then stop. It happened once on an evening when Ned had on his uniform. The uniform always seemed to excite Louise, to make her want to talk. She was frightened. “Some day, perhaps soon,” she thought, “people like us — middle-class, nice people in America — plunged perhaps into something new and terrible... what fools we are not to see it.. why can’t we see?

  “We may be shooting down the workers on whom everything rests. Because they are workers who produce everything and who begin to want — out of all this richness that is American — a new, a stronger, perhaps even a dominant voice... upsetting in the process all American thought — all American ideals....

  “I guess we thought — we Americans really believed — that every one had an equal opportunity here.

  “You go on saying, thinking that to yourself — year after year — and of course you come to believe it.

  “It makes you comfortable — believing.

  “It’s a lie, though.” A queer look came into Louise’s eyes. “The machine has made a joke of it,” she thought.

  These thoughts in the mind of Louise Sawyer, Ned Sawyer’s sister. Sometimes, when she was at home with the family, she began talking and then suddenly stopped. She got up from her chair and went into the house. Once Ned followed her. He also was disturbed. She was standing by a wall, crying softly, and he went and took her in his arms. He didn’t tell the father.

  He said to himself, “After all — a woman.” Perhaps the father said the same thing to himself. They both loved Louise. That year — the year 1930 — when Ned Sawyer put off going to law school until after Christmas — his father had said to him — he laughed saying it— “Ned,” he said, “I’m in a tight fix. I put a lot of money into stocks,” he said. “I think we’re all right. I think they’ll come back.

  “You’re bound to be safe betting on America,” he said, trying to be cheerful.

  “I’ll stay on here in your office for a time if you don’t mind,” Ned said, “I can study here.” He was thinking of Louise. She was to try for her Ph.D. that year and he didn’t want her to stop. “I don’t agree with anything she thinks but she’s got the brains of the family,” he thought.

  “That’s it,” the father said to Ned. “If you don’t mind waiting, Ned, I can see Louise through all right.”

  “I don’t see why she need know anything about it,” and “Of course not,” Ned Sawyer replied.

  9

  MARCHING WITH SOLDIERS in the darkness before dawn through the streets of Birchfield was exciting to Ned Sawyer.

  “Atten-shun.”

  “Forward — guide right.”

  Tramp. Tramp. Tramp. There was the shuffle of heavy uncertain feet on pavement. Listen to the sound of feet on pavements — the feet of soldiers.

  Do the feet like it — this taking of the bodies of men — Americans — to where they must put down other Americans?

  Common soldiers are common men. This may happen more and more often. Come on, feet, hit the pavements firmly! My Country ’Tis of Thee.

  The dawn was coming. Three or four companies of soldiers had been ordered to Birchfield but Ned Sawyer’s company was the first to arrive. His captain being ill, being indisposed, hadn’t come and so Ned was in command. The company detrained at a railroad station across the town from the Birchfield mill and the camp of the strikers, at a station quite far out at the edge of town, and at that hour just before dawn the streets of the town were deserted.

  There are always in every town a few men who will be abroad before the dawn. “You miss the best part of the day if you sleep late,” they say, but no one listens. They are annoyed that others will not listen. They speak of the air in the early morning. “It’s good,” they say. They tell how, in the early morning, just at dawn in the summer, the birds sing. “The air is so good,” they keep saying. Virtue is virtue. A man wants credit for what he does. He even wants credit for his habits. “They are good habits, they are mine,” he says to himself. “You see, I’m continually smoking these cigarettes. I do it to give people employment in cigarette factories.”

  In the town of Birchfield a citizen saw the arrival of the soldiers. There was a little thin man who ran a stationery store on a side street in Birchfield. He was on his feet all day every day and his feet were tender. At night they hurt him so that for a long time he could not sleep. He was unmarried, a bachelor, and slept on a cot in a little room at the back of his shop. He wore heavy glasses of a sort that magnified his eyes in the eyes of others. They looked like owl’s eyes. In the morning, before dawn and after he had slept a little, his feet began to hurt again so he got up and dressed. He went along the main street of Birchfield and sat on the steps of the court house. Birchfield was a county-seat town and the jail was immediately back of the court house. The jailer was also an early riser. He was an old man with a little stubby gray beard and sometimes he came out of the jail to sit with the stationer on the court-house steps. The stationer told him about his feet. He liked talking of his feet and liked people who would listen. There was some kind of growth. It was unusual. No other man in town had such feet. He was always saving up money to have operations, and during his life had read a good deal about feet. He had studied them. “They are the most delicate part of the body,” he said to the jailer. “There are so and so many small delicate bones in the feet.” He knew how many. There was a thing he liked to speak about. “You know, soldiers now,” he said. “Well, you take a soldier. He wants to get out of war or out of a battle so he shoots himself in the foot. He’s a damn fool. He doesn’t realize what he is doing. The damn fool, he couldn’t shoot himself in a worse place.” The jailer thought so too, although his own feet were all right. “You know,” he said, “you know what... if I was a young man and a soldier and wanted to get out of war or a battle I’d say I was a conscientious objector.” That was his idea. It was the best way, he thought. They might throw you into jail but what of it? He thought jails were all right, pretty good places to live. He spoke of the men held in the Birchfield jail as “my boys.” He wanted to talk about jails, not about feet.

  There was this man, the stationer, awake and abroad in the early morning when Ned Sawyer took his soldiers to Birchfield to put down the communists there — to hem them in in their camp — to make them quit trying to picket the Birchfield mills... to make them quit trying to parade... no more singing in the public streets... no more public meetings.

  There was the stationer awake on the streets of Birchfield, and his friend the jailer hadn’t come out of the jail yet. The sheriff of the county was awake. He was at the railroad station with two
deputy sheriffs to meet the soldiers. The town had heard rumors that the soldiers were coming, but there wasn’t anything definite. The time set for their coming hadn’t been given out. The sheriff and his deputies had kept mum. The owners of the mill at Birchfield had issued an ultimatum. There was the one company that owned mills in several North Carolina towns. The president of the company had told the manager at Birchfield to speak sharply to some of the prominent citizens of Birchfield... to the three bankers in town, to the mayor of the town and a few others... some of the more influential merchants had been told... “We don’t care whether we run our Birchfield mill or not. We want protection. We don’t care. We’ll close the mill.

  “We don’t want any more trouble. We can close the mill and keep it closed for five years. We’ve got other mills. You know how business is in these times.”

  There was the stationer of Birchfield awake when the soldiers arrived, and the sheriff and his two deputies were at the station, and there was another man. He was a tall old man, a retired farmer, who had moved into town and who also got up before dawn. When there was no work to be done in his garden... it was late fall now... gardening for the year was at an end... this one took a walk before breakfast. He walked through the main street of Birchfield and past the court house, but he would not stop to talk to the stationer.

  He just wouldn’t. He wasn’t a talker. He wasn’t very sociable. “Good morning,” he said to the stationer sitting on the court-house steps and without stopping went on his way. There was a kind of dignity in the man striding along thus in the empty street in the early morning. Rugged individuality! You couldn’t approach such a man, sit with him, talk with him about the pleasure of getting up early, speak to him about how good the air is — what fools others are to lie abed. You couldn’t speak with him about your feet, about operations on your feet and what delicate things the feet are. The stationer hated the man. He was a man filled with many little obscure hatreds. His feet did hurt. They hurt all the time.