Book Four: Chapter XVII

by Sherwood Anderson

　　As in most older American homes, the kitchen at the rear of the Butterworthfarmhouse was large and comfortable. Much of the life of the house had beenled there. Clara sat in a deep window that looked out across a little gullywhere in the spring a small stream ran down along the edge of the barnyard.She was then a quiet child and loved to sit for hours unobserved andundisturbed. At her back was the kitchen with the warm, rich smells and thesoft, quick, persistent footsteps of her mother. Her eyes closed and sheslept. Then she awoke. Before her lay a world into which her fancy couldcreep out. Across the stream before her eyes went a small, wooden bridgeand over this in the spring horses went away to the fields or to shedswhere they were hitched to milk or ice wagons. The sound of the hoofs ofthe horses pounding on the bridge was like thunder, harnesses rattled,voices shouted. Beyond the bridge was a path leading off to the left andalong the path were three small houses where hams were smoked. Men camefrom the wagon sheds bearing the meat on their shoulders and went into thelittle houses. Fires were lighted and smoke crawled lazily up through theroofs. In a field that lay beyond the smoke houses a man came to plow. Thechild, curled into a little, warm ball in the window seat, was happy. Whenshe closed her eyes fancies came like flocks of white sheep running out ofa green wood. Although she was later to become a tomboy and run wild overthe farm and through the barns, and although all her life she loved thesoil and the sense of things growing and of food for hungry mouths beingprepared, there was in her, even as a child, a hunger for the life of thespirit. In her dreams women, beautifully gowned and with rings on theirhands, came to brush the wet, matted hair back from her forehead. Acrossthe little wooden bridge before her eyes came wonderful men, women, andchildren. The children ran forward. They cried out to her. She thought ofthem as brothers and sisters who were to come to live in the farmhouse andwho were to make the old house ring with laughter. The children ran towardher with outstretched hands, but never arrived at the house. The bridgeextended itself. It stretched out under their feet so that they ran forwardforever on the bridge.

　　And behind the children came men and women, sometimes together, sometimeswalking alone. They did not seem like the children to belong to her. Likethe women who came to touch her hot forehead, they were beautifully gownedand walked with stately dignity.

　　The child climbed out of the window and stood on the kitchen floor. Hermother hurried about. She was feverishly active and often did not hear whenthe child spoke. "I want to know about my brothers and sisters: where arethey, why don't they come here?" she asked, but the mother did not hear,and if she did, had nothing to say. Sometimes she stopped to kiss the childand tears came to her eyes. Then something cooking on the kitchen stovedemanded attention. "You run outside," she said hurriedly, and turned againto her work.

　　* * * * *From the chair where Clara sat at the wedding feast provided by the energyof her father and the enthusiasm of Jim Priest, she could see over herfather's shoulder into the farm house kitchen. As when she was a child, sheclosed her eyes and dreamed of another kind of feast. With a growing senseof bitterness she realized that all her life, all through her girlhood andyoung womanhood, she had been waiting for this, her wedding night, andthat now, having come, the occasion for which she had waited so long andconcerning which she had dreamed so many dreams, had aborted into anoccasion for the display of ugliness and vulgarity. Her father, the onlyother person in the room in any way related to her, sat at the other endof the long table. Her aunt had gone away on a visit, and in the crowded,noisy room there was no woman to whom she could turn for understanding.She looked past her father's shoulder and directly into the wide windowseat where she had spent so many hours of her childhood. Again she wantedbrothers and sisters. "The beautiful men and women of the dreams were meantto come at this time, that's what the dreams were about; but, like theunborn children that ran with outstretched hands, they cannot get over thebridge and into the house," she thought vaguely. "I wish Mother had lived,or that Kate Chanceller were here," she whispered to herself as, raisingher eyes, she looked at her father.

　　Clara felt like an animal driven into a corner and surrounded by foes.Her father sat at the feast between two women, Mrs. Steve Hunter who wasinclined to corpulency, and a thin woman named Bowles, the wife of anundertaker of Bidwell. They continually whispered, smiled, and nodded theirheads. Hugh sat on the opposite side of the same table, and when he raisedhis eyes from the plate of food before him, could see past the head of alarge, masculine-looking woman into the farmhouse parlor where there wasanother table, also filled with guests. Clara turned from looking at herfather to look at her husband. He was merely a tall man with a long face,who could not raise his eyes. His long neck stuck itself out of a stiffwhite collar. To Clara he was, at the moment, a being without personality,one that the crowd at the table had swallowed up as it so busily swallowedfood and wine. When she looked at him he seemed to be drinking a good deal.His glass was always being filled and emptied. At the suggestion of thewoman who sat beside him, he performed the task of emptying it, withoutraising his eyes, and Steve Hunter, who sat on the other side of the table,leaned over and filled it again. Steve like her father whispered andwinked. "On the night of my wedding I was piped, you bet, as piped as ahatter. It's a good thing. It gives a man nerve," he explained to themasculine-looking woman to whom he was telling, with a good deal ofattention to details, the tale of his own marriage night.

　　Clara did not look at Hugh again. What he did seemed no concern of hers.Bowles the Bidwell undertaker had surrendered to the influence of the winethat had been flowing freely since the guests arrived and now got to hisfeet and began to talk. His wife tugged at his coat and tried to force himback into his seat, but Tom Butterworth jerked her arm away. "Ah, let himalone. He's got a story to tell," he said to the woman, who blushed andput her handkerchief over her face. "Well, it's a fact, that's how ithappened," the undertaker declared in a loud voice. "You see the sleevesof her nightgown were tied in hard knots by her rascally brothers. When Itried to unfasten them with my teeth I bit big holes in the sleeves."

　　Clara gripped the arm of her chair. "If I can let the night pass withoutshowing these people how much I hate them I'll do well enough," she thoughtgrimly. She looked at the dishes laden with food and wished she could breakthem one by one over the heads of her father's guests. As a relief to hermind, she again looked past her father's head and through a doorway intothe kitchen.

　　In the big room three or four cooks were busily engaged in the preparationof food, and waitresses continually brought steaming dishes and put them onthe tables. She thought of her mother's life, the life led in that room,married to the man who was her own father and who no doubt, but for thefact that circumstances had made him a man of wealth, would have beensatisfied to see his daughter led into just such another life.

　　"Kate was right about men. They want something from women, but what do theycare what kind of lives we lead after they get what they want?" she thoughtgrimly.

　　The more to separate herself from the feasting, laughing crowd, Claratried to think out the details of her mother's life. "It was the life ofa beast," she thought. Like herself, her mother had come to the housewith her husband on the night of her marriage. There was just suchanother feast. The country was new then and the people for the most partdesperately poor. Still there was drinking. She had heard her father andJim Priest speak of the drinking bouts of their youth. The men came as theyhad come now, and with them came women, women who had been coarsened by thelife they led. Pigs were killed and game brought from the forests. The mendrank, shouted, fought, and played practical jokes. Clara wondered if anyof the men and women in the room would dare go upstairs into her sleepingroom and tie knots in her night clothes. They had done that when her mothercame to the house as a bride. Then they had all gone away and her fatherhad taken his bride upstairs. He was drunk, and her own husband Hugh wasnow getting drunk. Her mother had submitted. Her life had been a story ofsubmission. Kate Chanceller had said it was so married women lived, andher mother's life had proven the truth of the statement. In the farmhousekitchen, where now three or four cooks worked so busily, she had worked herlife out alone. From the kitchen she had gone directly upstairs and to bedwith her husband. Once a week on Saturday afternoons she went into town andstayed long enough to buy supplies for another week of cooking. "She musthave been kept going until she dropped down dead," Clara thought, and hermind taking another turn, added, "and many others, both men and women, musthave been forced by circumstances to serve my father in the same blind way.It was all done in order that prosperity and money with which to do vulgarthings might be his."

　　Clara's mother had brought but one child into the world. She wondered why.Then she wondered if she would become the mother of a child. Her hands nolonger gripped the arms of her chair, but lay on the table before her. Shelooked at them and they were strong. She was herself a strong woman. Afterthe feast was over and the guests had gone away, Hugh, given courage by thedrinks he continued to consume, would come upstairs to her. Some twist ofher mind made her forget her husband, and in fancy she felt herself aboutto be attacked by a strange man on a dark road at the edge of a forest. Theman had tried to take her into his arms and kiss her and she had managed toget her hands on his throat. Her hands lying on the table twitchedconvulsively.

　　In the big farmhouse dining-room and in the parlor where the second tableof guests sat, the wedding feast went on. Afterward when she thought of it,Clara always remembered her wedding feast as a horsey affair. Somethingin the natures of Tom Butterworth and Jim Priest, she thought, expresseditself that night. The jokes that went up and down the table were horsey,and Clara thought the women who sat at the tables heavy and mare-like.

　　Jim did not come to the table to sit with the others, was in fact notinvited, but all evening he kept appearing and reappearing and had the airof a master of ceremonies. Coming into the dining room he stood by thedoor, scratching his head. Then he went out. It was as though he hadsaid to himself, "Well, it's all right, everything is going all right,everything is lively, you see." All his life Jim had been a drinker ofwhisky and knew his limitations. His system as a drinking man had alwaysbeen quite simple. On Saturday afternoons, when the work about the barnswas done for the day and the other employees had gone away, he went to siton the steps of a corncrib with the bottle in his hand. In the winter hewent to sit by the kitchen fire in a little house below the apple orchardwhere he and the other employees slept. He took a long drink from thebottle and then holding it in his hand sat for a time thinking of theevents of his life. Whisky made him somewhat sentimental. After one longdrink he thought of his youth in a town in Pennsylvania. He had been oneof six children, all boys, and at an early age his mother had died. Jimthought of her and then of his father. When he had himself come west intoOhio, and later when he was a soldier in the Civil War, he despised hisfather and reverenced the memory of his mother. In the war he had foundhimself physically unable to stand up before the enemy during a battle.When the report of guns was heard and the other men of his company gotgrimly into line and went forward, something happened to his legs and hewanted to run away. So great was the desire in him that craftiness grew inhis brain. Watching his chance, he pretended to have been shot and fell tothe ground, and when the others had gone on crept away and hid himself. Hefound it was not impossible to disappear altogether and reappear in anotherplace. The draft went into effect and many men not liking the notion of warwere willing to pay large sums to the men who would go in their places.Jim went into the business of enlisting and deserting. All about him weremen talking of the necessity of saving the country, and for four years hethought only of saving his own hide. Then suddenly the war was over and hebecame a farm hand. As he worked all week in the fields, and in the eveningsometimes, as he lay in his bed and the moon came up, he thought of hismother and of the nobility and sacrifice of her life. He wished to be suchanother. After having two or three drinks out of the bottle, he admired hisfather, who in the Pennsylvania town had borne the reputation of being aliar and a rascal. After his mother's death his father had managed to marrya widow who owned a farm. "The old man was a slick one," he said aloud,tipping up the bottle and taking another long drink. "If I had stayed athome until I got more understanding, the old man and I together might havedone something." He finished the bottle and went away to sleep on the hay,or if it were winter, threw himself into one of the bunks in the bunkhouse. He dreamed of becoming one who went through life beating people outof money, living by his wits, getting the best of every one.

　　Until the night of Clara's wedding Jim had never tasted wine, and as it didnot bring on a desire for sleep, he thought himself unaffected. "It's likesweetened water," he said, going into the darkness of the barnyard andemptying another half bottle down his throat. "The stuff has no kick.Drinking it is like drinking sweet cider."

　　Jim got into a frolicsome mood and went through the crowded kitchen andinto the dining room where the guests were assembled. At the moment therather riotous laughter and story telling had ceased and everything wasquiet. He was worried. "Things aren't going well. Clara's party is becominga frost," he thought resentfully. He began to dance a heavy-footed jig ona little open place by the kitchen door and the guests stopped talkingto watch. They shouted and clapped their hands. A thunder of applausearose. The guests who were seated in the parlor and who could not see theperformance got up and crowded into the doorway that connected the tworooms. Jim became extraordinarily bold, and as one of the young women Tomhad hired as waitresses at that moment went past bearing a large dish offood, he swung himself quickly about and took her into his arms. The dishflew across the floor and broke against a table leg and the young womanscreamed. A farm dog that had found its way into the kitchen rushed intothe room and barked loudly. Henry Heller's orchestra, concealed under astairway that led to the upper part of the house, began to play furiously.A strange animal fervor swept over Jim. His legs flew rapidly about andhis heavy feet made a great clatter on the floor. The young woman in hisarms screamed and laughed. Jim closed his eyes and shouted. He felt thatthe wedding party had until that moment been a failure and that he wastransforming it into a success. Rising to their feet the men shouted,clapped their hands and beat with their fists on the table. When theorchestra came to the end of the dance, Jim stood flushed and triumphantbefore the guests, holding the woman in his arms. In spite of her struggleshe held her tightly against his breast and kissed her eyes, cheeks, andmouth. Then releasing her he winked and made a gesture for silence. "On awedding night some one's got to have the nerve to do a little love-making,"he said, looking pointedly toward the place where Hugh sat with head bentand with his eyes staring at a glass of wine that sat at his elbow.

　　* * * * *It was past two o'clock when the feast came to an end. When the guestsbegan to depart, Clara stood for a moment alone and tried to get herselfin hand. Something inside her felt cold and old. If she had often thoughtshe wanted a man, and that life as a married woman would put an end toher problems, she did not think so at that moment. "What I want aboveeverything else is a woman," she thought. All the evening her mind had beentrying to clutch and hold the almost forgotten figure of her mother, but itwas too vague and shadowy. With her mother she had never walked and talkedlate at night through streets of towns when the world was asleep and whenthoughts were born in herself. "After all," she thought, "Mother may alsohave belonged to all this." She looked at the people preparing to depart.Several men had gathered in a group by the door. One of them told a storyat which the others laughed loudly. The women standing about had flushedand, Clara thought, coarse faces. "They have gone into marriage likecattle," she told herself. Her mind, running out of the room, began tocaress the memory of her one woman friend, Kate Chanceller. Often on latespring afternoons as she and Kate had walked together something very likelove-making had happened between them. They went along quietly and eveningcame on. Suddenly they stopped in the street and Kate had put her armsabout Clara's shoulders. For a moment they stood thus close together and astrange gentle and yet hungry look came into Kate's eyes. It only lasteda moment and when it happened both women were somewhat embarrassed. Katelaughed and taking hold of Clara's arm pulled her along the sidewalk."Let's walk like the devil," she said, "come on, let's get up some speed."

　　Clara put her hands to her eyes as though to shut out the scene in theroom. "If I could have been with Kate this evening I could have come to aman believing in the possible sweetness of marriage," she thought.