Book Two: Chapter IV

by Sherwood Anderson

　　Hugh McVey was twenty-three years old when he went to live in Bidwell. Theposition of telegraph operator at the Wheeling station a mile north of townbecame vacant and, through an accidental encounter with a former residentof a neighboring town, he got the place.

　　The Missourian had been at work during the winter in a sawmill in thecountry near a northern Indiana town. During the evenings he wandered oncountry roads and in the town streets, but he did not talk to any one. Ashad happened to him in other places, he had the reputation of being queer.His clothes were worn threadbare and, although he had money in his pockets,he did not buy new ones. In the evening when he went through the townstreets and saw the smartly dressed clerks standing before the stores, helooked at his own shabby person and was ashamed to enter. In his boyhoodSarah Shepard had always attended to the buying of his clothes, and he madeup his mind that he would go to the place in Michigan to which she and herhusband had retired, and pay her a visit. He wanted Sarah Shepard to buyhim a new outfit of clothes, but wanted also to talk with her.

　　Out of the three years of going from place to place and working with othermen as a laborer, Hugh had got no big impulse that he felt would mark theroad his life should take; but the study of mathematical problems, takenup to relieve his loneliness and to cure his inclination to dreams, wasbeginning to have an effect on his character. He thought that if he sawSarah Shepard again he could talk to her and through her get into theway of talking to others. In the sawmill where he worked he answered theoccasional remarks made to him by his fellow workers in a slow, hesitatingdrawl, and his body was still awkward and his gait shambling, but he didhis work more quickly and accurately. In the presence of his foster-motherand garbed in new clothes, he believed he could now talk to her in a waythat had been impossible during his youth. She would see the change in hischaracter and would be encouraged about him. They would get on to a newbasis and he would feel respect for himself in another.

　　Hugh went to the railroad station to make inquiry regarding the fare to theMichigan town and there had the adventure that upset his plans. As he stoodat the window of the ticket office, the ticket seller, who was also thetelegraph operator, tried to engage him in conversation. When he had giventhe information asked, he followed Hugh out of the building and into thedarkness of a country railroad station at night, and the two men stoppedand stood together beside an empty baggage truck. The ticket agent spoke ofthe loneliness of life in the town and said he wished he could go back tohis own place and be again with his own people. "It may not be any betterin my own town, but I know everybody there," he said. He was curiousconcerning Hugh as were all the people of the Indiana town, and hoped toget him into talk in order that he might find out why he walked alone atnight, why he sometimes worked all evening over books and figures in hisroom at the country hotel, and why he had so little to say to his fellows.Hoping to fathom Hugh's silence he abused the town in which they bothlived. "Well," he began, "I guess I understand how you feel. You want toget out of this place." He explained his own predicament in life. "I gotmarried," he said. "Already I have three children. Out here a man can makemore money railroading than he can in my state, and living is pretty cheap.Just to-day I had an offer of a job in a good town near my own place inOhio, but I can't take it. The job only pays forty a month. The town's allright, one of the best in the northern part of the State, but you see thejob's no good. Lord, I wish I could go. I'd like to live again among peoplesuch as live in that part of the country."

　　The railroad man and Hugh walked along the street that ran from the stationup into the main street of the town. Wanting to meet the advances that hadbeen made by his companion and not knowing how to go about it, Hugh adoptedthe method he had heard his fellow laborers use with one another. "Well,"he said slowly, "come have a drink."

　　The two men went into a saloon and stood by the bar. Hugh made a tremendouseffort to overcome his embarrassment. As he and the railroad man drankfoaming glasses of beer he explained that he also had once been a railroadman and knew telegraphy, but that for several years he had been doing otherwork. His companion looked at his shabby clothes and nodded his head. Hemade a motion with his head to indicate that he wanted Hugh to come withhim outside into the darkness. "Well, well," he exclaimed, when they hadagain got outside and had started along the street toward the station. "Iunderstand now. They've all been wondering about you and I've heard lots oftalk. I won't say anything, but I'm going to do something for you."

　　Hugh went to the station with his new-found friend and sat down in thelighted office. The railroad man got out a sheet of paper and began towrite a letter. "I'm going to get you that job," he said. "I'm writing theletter now and I'll get it off on the midnight train. You've got to get onyour feet. I was a boozer myself, but I cut it all out. A glass of beer nowand then, that's my limit."

　　He began to talk of the town in Ohio where he proposed to get Hugh thejob that would set him up in the world and save him from the habit ofdrinking, and described it as an earthly paradise in which lived bright,clear-thinking men and beautiful women. Hugh was reminded sharply of thetalk he had heard from the lips of Sarah Shepard, when in his youth shespent long evenings telling him of the wonder of her own Michigan and NewEngland towns and people, and contrasted the life lived there with thatlived by the people of his own place.

　　Hugh decided not to try to explain away the mistake made by his newacquaintance, and to accept the offer of assistance in getting theappointment as telegraph operator.

　　The two men walked out of the station and stood again in the darkness. Therailroad man felt like one who has been given the privilege of plucking ahuman soul out of the darkness of despair. He was full of words that pouredfrom his lips and he assumed a knowledge of Hugh and his character entirelyunwarranted by the circumstances. "Well," he exclaimed heartily, "you seeI've given you a send-off. I have told them you're a good man and a goodoperator, but that you will take the place with its small salary becauseyou've been sick and just now can't work very hard." The excited manfollowed Hugh along the street. It was late and the store lights had beenput out. From one of the town's two saloons that lay in their way arose aclatter of voices. The old boyhood dream of finding a place and a peopleamong whom he could, by sitting still and inhaling the air breathed byothers, come into a warm closeness with life, came back to Hugh. He stoppedbefore the saloon to listen to the voices within, but the railroad manplucked at his coat sleeve and protested. "Now, now, you're going to cut itout, eh?" he asked anxiously and then hurriedly explained his anxiety. "Ofcourse I know what's the matter with you. Didn't I tell you I've been theremyself? You've been working around. I know why that is. You don't have totell me. If there wasn't something the matter with him, no man who knowstelegraphy would work in a sawmill.

　　"Well, there's no good talking about it," he added thoughtfully. "I'vegiven you a send-off. You're going to cut it out, eh?"

　　Hugh tried to protest and to explain that he was not addicted to the habitof drinking, but the Ohio man would not listen. "It's all right," he saidagain, and then they came to the hotel where Hugh lived and he turned togo back to the station and wait for the midnight train that would carrythe letter away and that would, he felt, carry also his demand that afellow-human, who had slipped from the modern path of work and progressshould be given a new chance. He felt magnanimous and wonderfully gracious."It's all right, my boy," he said heartily. "No use talking to me. To-nightwhen you came to the station to ask the fare to that hole of a place inMichigan I saw you were embarrassed. 'What's the matter with that fellow?'I said to myself. I got to thinking. Then I came up town with you and rightaway you bought me a drink. I wouldn't have thought anything about that ifI hadn't been there myself. You'll get on your feet. Bidwell, Ohio, is fullof good men. You get in with them and they'll help you and stick by you.You'll like those people. They've got get-up to them. The place you'll workat there is far out of town. It's away out about a mile at a little kind ofoutside-like place called Pickleville. There used to be a saloon there anda factory for putting up cucumber pickles, but they've both gone now. Youwon't be tempted to slip in that place. You'll have a chance to get on yourfeet. I'm glad I thought of sending you there."

　　* * * * *The Wheeling and Lake Erie ran along a little wooded depression that cutacross the wide expanse of open farm lands north of the town of Bidwell. Itbrought coal from the hill country of West Virginia and southeastern Ohioto ports on Lake Erie, and did not pay much attention to the carrying ofpassengers. In the morning a train consisting of a combined express andbaggage car and two passenger coaches went north and west toward the lake,and in the evening the same train returned, bound southeast into the Hills,The Bidwell station of the road was, in an odd way, detached from thetown's life. The invisible roof under which the life of the town and thesurrounding country was lived did not cover it. As the Indiana railroadman had told Hugh, the station itself stood on a spot known locally asPickleville. Back of the station there was a small building for the storageof freight and near at hand four or five houses facing Turner's Pike. Thepickle factory, now deserted and with its windows gone, stood across thetracks from the station and beside a small stream that ran under a bridgeand across country through a grove of trees to the river. On hot summerdays a sour, pungent smell arose from the old factory, and at night itspresence lent a ghostly flavor to the tiny corner of the world in whichlived perhaps a dozen people.

　　All day and at night an intense persistent silence lay over Pickleville,while in Bidwell a mile away the stir of new life began. In the eveningsand on rainy afternoons when men could not work in the fields, old JudgeHanby went along Turner's Pike and across the wagon bridge into Bidwell andsat in a chair at the back of Birdie Spink's drug store. He talked. Mencame in to listen to him and went out. New talk ran through the town. A newforce that was being born into American life and into life everywhere allover the world was feeding on the old dying individualistic life. The newforce stirred and aroused the people. It met a need that was universal. Itwas meant to seal men together, to wipe out national lines, to walk underseas and fly through the air, to change the entire face of the world inwhich men lived. Already the giant that was to be king in the place of oldkings was calling his servants and his armies to serve him. He used themethods of old kings and promised his followers booty and gain. Everywherehe went unchallenged, surveying the land, raising a new class of men topositions of power. Railroads had already been pushed out across theplains; great coal fields from which was to be taken food to warm the bloodin the body of the giant were being opened up; iron fields were beingdiscovered; the roar and clatter of the breathing of the terrible newthing, half hideous, half beautiful in its possibilities, that was forso long to drown the voices and confuse the thinking of men, was heardnot only in the towns but even in lonely farm houses, where its willingservants, the newspapers and magazines, had begun to circulate in everincreasing numbers. At the town of Gibsonville, near Bidwell, Ohio, and atLima and Finley, Ohio, oil and gas fields were discovered. At Cleveland,Ohio, a precise, definite-minded man named Rockefeller bought and soldoil. From the first he served the new thing well and he soon found othersto serve with him. The Morgans, Fricks, Goulds, Carnegies, Vanderbilts,servants of the new king, princes of the new faith, merchants all, a newkind of rulers of men, defied the world-old law of class that puts themerchant below the craftsman, and added to the confusion of men by takingon the air of creators. They were merchants glorified and dealt in giantthings, in the lives of men and in mines, forests, oil and gas fields,factories, and railroads.

　　And all over the country, in the towns, the farm houses, and the growingcities of the new country, people stirred and awakened. Thought and poetrydied or passed as a heritage to feeble fawning men who also became servantsof the new order. Serious young men in Bidwell and in other American towns,whose fathers had walked together on moonlight nights along Turner's Piketo talk of God, went away to technical schools. Their fathers had walkedand talked and thoughts had grown up in them. The impulse had reached backto their father's fathers on moonlit roads of England, Germany, Ireland,France, and Italy, and back of these to the moonlit hills of Judea whereshepherds talked and serious young men, John and Matthew and Jesus, caughtthe drift of the talk and made poetry of it; but the serious-minded sons ofthese men in the new land were swept away from thinking and dreaming. Fromall sides the voice of the new age that was to do definite things shoutedat them. Eagerly they took up the cry and ran with it. Millions of voicesarose. The clamor became terrible, and confused the minds of all men. Inmaking way for the newer, broader brotherhood into which men are some dayto emerge, in extending the invisible roofs of the towns and cities tocover the world, men cut and crushed their way through the bodies of men.

　　And while the voices became louder and more excited and the new giantwalked about making a preliminary survey of the land, Hugh spent his daysat the quiet, sleepy railroad station at Pickleville and tried to adjusthis mind to the realization of the fact that he was not to be accepted asfellow by the citizens of the new place to which he had come. During theday he sat in the tiny telegraph office or, pulling an express truck to theopen window near his telegraph instrument, lay on his back with a sheetof paper propped on his bony knees and did sums. Farmers driving past onTurner's Pike saw him there and talked of him in the stores in town. "He'sa queer silent fellow," they said. "What do you suppose he's up to?"

　　Hugh walked in the streets of Bidwell at night as he had walked in thestreets of towns in Indiana and Illinois. He approached groups of menloafing on a street corner and then went hurriedly past them. On quietstreets as he went along under the trees, he saw women sitting in thelamplight in the houses and hungered to have a house and a woman of hisown. One afternoon a woman school teacher came to the station to makeinquiry regarding the fare to a town in West Virginia. As the station agentwas not about Hugh gave her the information she sought and she lingered fora few moments to talk with him. He answered the questions she asked withmonosyllables and she soon went away, but he was delighted and looked uponthe incident as an adventure. At night he dreamed of the school teacher andwhen he awoke, pretended she was with him in his bedroom. He put out hishand and touched the pillow. It was soft and smooth as he imagined thecheek of a woman would be. He did not know the school teacher's name butinvented one for her. "Be quiet, Elizabeth. Do not let me disturb yoursleep," he murmured into the darkness. One evening he went to the housewhere the school teacher boarded and stood in the shadow of a tree until hesaw her come out and go toward Main Street. Then he went by a roundaboutway and walked past her on the sidewalk before the lighted stores. He didnot look at her, but in passing her dress touched his arm and he was soexcited later that he could not sleep and spent half the night walkingabout and thinking of the wonderful thing that had happened to him.

　　The ticket, express, and freight agent for the Wheeling and Lake Erie atBidwell, a man named George Pike, lived in one of the houses near thestation, and besides attending to his duties for the railroad company,owned and worked a small farm. He was a slender, alert, silent man with along drooping mustache. Both he and his wife worked as Hugh had never seena man and woman work before. Their arrangement of the division of laborwas not based on sex but on convenience. Sometimes Mrs. Pike came to thestation to sell tickets, load express boxes and trunks on the passengertrains and deliver heavy boxes of freight to draymen and farmers, while herhusband worked in the fields back of his house or prepared the eveningmeal, and sometimes the matter was reversed and Hugh did not see Mrs. Pikefor several days at a time.

　　During the day there was little for the station agent or his wife to doat the station and they disappeared. George Pike had made an arrangementof wires and pulleys connecting the station with a large bell hung on topof his house, and when some one came to the station to receive or deliverfreight Hugh pulled at the wire and the bell began to ring. In a fewminutes either George Pike or his wife came running from the house orfields, dispatched the business and went quickly away again.

　　Day after day Hugh sat in a chair by a desk in the station or went outsideand walked up and down the station platform. Engines pulling long caravansof coal cars ground past. The brakemen waved their hands to him and thenthe train disappeared into the grove of trees that grew beside the creekalong which the tracks of the road were laid. In Turner's Pike a creakingfarm wagon appeared and then disappeared along the tree-lined road that ledto Bidwell. The farmer turned on his wagon seat to stare at Hugh but unlikethe railroad men did not wave his hand. Adventurous boys came out along theroad from town and climbed, shouting and laughing, over the rafters in thedeserted pickle factory across the tracks or went to fish in the creek inthe shade of the factory walls. Their shrill voices added to the lonelinessof the spot. It became almost unbearable to Hugh. In desperation he turnedfrom the rather meaningless doing of sums and working out of problemsregarding the number of fence pickets that could be cut from a tree orthe number of steel rails or railroad ties consumed in building a mile ofrailroad, the innumerable petty problems with which he had been keepinghis mind busy, and turned to more definite and practical problems. Heremembered an autumn he had put in cutting corn on a farm in Illinois and,going into the station, waved his long arms about, imitating the movementsof a man in the act of cutting corn. He wondered if a machine might not bemade that would do the work, and tried to make drawings of the parts ofsuch a machine. Feeling his inability to handle so difficult a problemhe sent away for books and began the study of mechanics. He joined acorrespondence school started by a man in Pennsylvania, and worked for dayson the problems the man sent him to do. He asked questions and began alittle to understand the mystery of the application of power. Like theother young men of Bidwell he began to put himself into touch with thespirit of the age, but unlike them he did not dream of suddenly acquiredwealth. While they embraced new and futile dreams he worked to destroy thetendency to dreams in himself.

　　Hugh came to Bidwell in the early spring and during May, June and Julythe quiet station at Pickleville awoke for an hour or two each evening.A certain percentage of the sudden and almost overwhelming increase inexpress business that came with the ripening of the fruit and berry cropcame to the Wheeling, and every evening a dozen express trucks, piled highwith berry boxes, waited for the south bound train. When the train cameinto the station a small crowd had assembled. George Pike and his stoutwife worked madly, throwing the boxes in at the door of the express car.Idlers standing about became interested and lent a hand. The engineerclimbed out of his locomotive, stretched his legs and crossing a narrowroad got a drink from the pump in George Pike's yard.

　　Hugh walked to the door of his telegraph office and standing in the shadowswatched the busy scene. He wanted to take part in it, to laugh and talkwith the men standing about, to go to the engineer and ask questionsregarding the locomotive and its construction, to help George Pike and hiswife, and perhaps cut through their silence and his own enough to becomeacquainted with them. He thought of all these things but stayed in theshadow of the door that led to the telegraph office until, at a signalgiven by the train conductor, the engineer climbed into his engine and thetrain began to move away into the evening darkness. When Hugh came out ofhis office the station platform was deserted again. In the grass acrossthe tracks and beside the ghostly looking old factory, crickets sang. TomWilder, the Bidwell hack driver, had got a traveling man off the train andthe dust left by the heels of his team still hung in the air over Turner'sPike. From the darkness that brooded over the trees that grew along thecreek beyond the factory came the hoarse croak of frogs. On Turner's Pike ahalf dozen Bidwell young men accompanied by as many town girls walked alongthe path beside the road under the trees. They had come to the stationto have somewhere to go, had made up a party to come, but now the halfunconscious purpose of their coming was apparent. The party split itselfup into couples and each strove to get as far away as possible from theothers. One of the couples came back along the path toward the station andwent to the pump in George Pike's yard. They stood by the pump, laughingand pretending to drink out of a tin cup, and when they got again intothe road the others had disappeared. They became silent. Hugh went to theend of the platform and watched as they walked slowly along. He becamefuriously jealous of the young man who put his arm about the waist of hiscompanion and then, when he turned and saw Hugh staring at him, took itaway again.

　　The telegraph operator went quickly along the platform until he was out ofrange of the young man's eyes, and, when he thought the gathering darknesswould hide him, returned and crept along the path beside the road afterhim. Again a hungry desire to enter into the lives of the people about himtook possession of the Missourian. To be a young man dressed in a stiffwhite collar, wearing neatly made clothes, and in the evening to walk aboutwith young girls seemed like getting on the road to happiness. He wantedto run shouting along the path beside the road until he had overtaken theyoung man and woman, to beg them to take him with them, to accept himas one of themselves, but when the momentary impulse had passed and hereturned to the telegraph office and lighted a lamp, he looked at hislong awkward body and could not conceive of himself as ever by any chancebecoming the thing he wanted to be. Sadness swept over him and his gauntface, already cut and marked with deep lines, became longer and moregaunt. The old boyhood notion, put into his mind by the words of hisfoster-mother, Sarah Shepard, that a town and a people could remake him anderase from his body the marks of what he thought of as his inferior birth,began to fade. He tried to forget the people about him and turned withrenewed energy to the study of the problems in the books that now lay ina pile upon his desk. His inclination to dreams, balked by the persistentholding of his mind to definite things, began to reassert itself in a newform, and his brain played no more with pictures of clouds and men inagitated movement but took hold of steel, wood, and iron. Dumb masses ofmaterials taken out of the earth and the forests were molded by his mindinto fantastic shapes. As he sat in the telegraph office during the day orwalked alone through the streets of Bidwell at night, he saw in fancy athousand new machines, formed by his hands and brain, doing the work thathad been done by the hands of men. He had come to Bidwell, not only inthe hope that there he would at last find companionship, but also becausehis mind was really aroused and he wanted leisure to begin trying to dotangible things. When the citizens of Bidwell would not take him into theirtown life but left him standing to one side, as the tiny dwelling placefor men called Pickleville where he lived stood aside out from under theinvisible roof of the town, he decided to try to forget men and to expresshimself wholly in work.