Book Five: Chapter XXI

by Sherwood Anderson

　　It was a summer night in Ohio and the wheat in the long, flat fields thatstretched away to the north from the town of Bidwell was ripe for thecutting. Between the wheat fields lay corn and cabbage fields. In the cornfields the green stalks stood up like young trees. Facing the fields laythe white roads, once the silent roads, hushed and empty through the nightsand often during many hours of the day, the night silence broken only atlong intervals by the clattering hoofs of homeward bound horses and thesilence of days by creaking wagons. Along the roads on a summer eveningwent the young farm hand in his buggy for which he had spent a summer'swage, a long summer of sweaty toil in hot fields. The hoofs of his horsebeat a soft tattoo on the roads. His sweetheart sat beside him and he wasin no hurry. All day he had been at work in the harvest and on the morrowhe would work again. It did not matter. For him the night would last untilthe cocks in isolated farmyards began to hail the dawn. He forgot the horseand did not care what turning he took. All roads led to happiness for him.

　　Beside the long roads was an endless procession of fields broken now andthen by a strip of woodland, where the shadows of trees fell upon theroads and made pools of an inky blackness. In the long, dry grass in fencecorners insects sang; in the young cabbage fields rabbits ran, flittingaway like shadows in the moonlight. The cabbage fields were beautiful too.

　　Who has written or sung of the beauties of corn fields in Illinois,Indiana, Iowa, or of the vast Ohio cabbage fields? In the cabbage fieldsthe broad outer leaves fall down to make a background for the shifting,delicate colors of soils. The leaves are themselves riotous with color.As the season advances they change from light to dark greens, a thousandshades of purples, blues and reds appear and disappear.

　　In silence the cabbage fields slept beside the roads in Ohio. Notyet had the motor cars come to tear along the roads, their flashinglights--beautiful too, when seen by one afoot on the roads on a summernight--had not yet made the roads an extension of the cities. Akron, theterrible town, had not yet begun to roll forth its countless millions ofrubber hoops, filled each with its portion of God's air compressed and inprison at last like the farm hands who have gone to the cities. Detroit andToledo had not begun to send forth their hundreds of thousands of motorcars to shriek and scream the nights away on country roads. Willis wasstill a mechanic in an Indiana town, and Ford still worked in a bicyclerepair shop in Detroit.

　　It was a summer night in the Ohio country and the moon shone. A countrydoctor's horse went at a humdrum pace along the roads. Softly and at longintervals men afoot stumbled along. A farm hand whose horse was lame walkedtoward town. An umbrella mender, benighted on the roads, hurried toward thelights of the distant town. In Bidwell, the place that had been on othersummer nights a sleepy town filled with gossiping berry pickers, thingswere astir.

　　Change, and the thing men call growth, was in the air. Perhaps in its ownway revolution was in the air, the silent, the real revolution that grewwith the growth of the towns. In the stirring, bustling town of Bidwellthat quiet summer night something happened that startled men. Somethinghappened, and then in a few minutes it happened again. Heads wagged,special editions of daily newspapers were printed, the great hive of menwas disturbed, under the invisible roof of the town that had so suddenlybecome a city, the seeds of self-consciousness were planted in new soil, inAmerican soil.

　　Before all this began, however, something else happened. The first motorcar ran through the streets of Bidwell and out upon the moonlit roads. Themotor car was driven by Tom Butterworth and in it sat his daughter Clarawith her husband Hugh McVey. During the week before, Tom had brought thecar from Cleveland, and the mechanic who rode with him had taught him theart of driving. Now he drove alone and boldly. Early in the evening he hadrun out to the farmhouse to take his daughter and son-in-law for theirfirst ride. Hugh sat in the seat beside him and after they had started andwere clear of the town, Tom turned to him. "Now watch me step on her tail,"he said proudly, using for the first time the motor slang he had picked upfrom the Cleveland mechanic.

　　As Tom sent the car hurling over the roads, Clara sat alone in the backseat unimpressed by her father's new acquisition. For three years shehad been married and she felt that she did not yet know the man she hadmarried. Always the story had been the same, moments of light and thendarkness again. A new machine that went along roads at a startlinglyincreased rate of speed might change the whole face of the world, as herfather declared it would, but it did not change certain facts of her life."Am I a failure as a wife, or is Hugh impossible as a husband?" she askedherself for perhaps the thousandth time as the car, having got into a longstretch of clear, straight road, seemed to leap and sail through the airlike a bird. "At any rate I have married me a husband and yet I have nohusband, I have been in a man's arms but I have no lover, I have taken holdof life, but life has slipped through my fingers."

　　Like her father, Hugh seemed to Clara absorbed in only the things outsidehimself, the outer crust of life. He was like and yet unlike her father.She was baffled by him. There was something in the man she wanted and couldnot find. "The fault must be in me," she told herself. "He's all right, butwhat's the matter with me?"

　　After that night when he ran away from her bridal bed, Clara had more thanonce thought the miracle had happened. It did sometimes. On that night whenhe came to her out of the rain it had happened. There was a wall a blowcould shatter, and she raised her hand to strike the blow. The wall wasshattered and then builded itself again. Even as she lay at night in herhusband's arms the wall reared itself up in the darkness of the sleepingroom.

　　Over the farmhouse on such nights dense silence brooded and she and Hugh,as had become their habit together, were silent. In the darkness she put upher hand to touch her husband's face and hair. He lay still and she had theimpression of some great force holding him back, holding her back. A sharpsense of struggle filled the room. The air was heavy with it.

　　When words came they did not break the silence. The wall remained.

　　The words that came were empty, meaningless words. Hugh suddenly brokeforth into speech. He spoke of his work at the shop and of his progresstoward the solution of some difficult, mechanical problem. If it wereevening when the thing happened the two people got out of the lighted housewhere they had been sitting together, each feeling darkness would help theeffort they were both making to tear away the wall. They walked along alane, past the barns and over the little wooden bridge across the streamthat ran down through the barnyard. Hugh did not want to talk of the workat the shop, but could find words for no other talk. They came to a fencewhere the lane turned and from where they could look down the hillside andinto the town. He did not look at Clara but stared down the hillside andthe words, in regard to the mechanical difficulties that had occupied hismind all day, ran on and on. When later they went back to the house he felta little relieved. "I've said words. There is something achieved," hethought.

　　* * * * *And now after the three years as a married woman Clara sat in the motorwith her father and husband and with them was sent whirling swiftly throughthe summer night. The car ran down the hill road from the Butterworth farm,through a dozen residence streets in town and then out upon the long,straight roads in the rich, flat country to the north. It had skirtedthe town as a hungry wolf might have encircled silently and swiftly thefire-lit camp of a hunter. To Clara the machine seemed like a wolf, boldand cunning and yet afraid. Its great nose pushed through the troubledair of the quiet roads, frightening horses, breaking the silence with itspersistent purring, drowning the song of insects. The headlights alsodisturbed the slumbers of the night. They flashed into barnyards wherefowls slept on the lower branches of trees, played on the sides of barnssent the cattle in fields galloping away into darkness, and frightenedhorribly the wild things, the red squirrels and chipmunks that live inwayside fences in the Ohio country. Clara hated the machine and began tohate all machines. Thinking of machinery and the making of machines had,she decided, been at the bottom of her husband's inability to talk withher. Revolt against the whole mechanical impulse of her generation began totake possession of her.

　　And as she rode another and more terrible kind of revolt against themachine began in the town of Bidwell. It began in fact before Tom with hisnew motor left the Butterworth farm, it began before the summer moon cameup, before the gray mantle of night had been laid over the shoulders of thehills south of the farmhouse.

　　Jim Gibson, the journeyman harness maker who worked in Joe Wainsworth'sshop, was beside himself on that night. He had just won a great victoryover his employer and felt like celebrating. For several days he had beentelling the story of his anticipated victory in the saloons and store, andnow it had happened. After dining at his boarding-house he went to a saloonand had a drink. Then he went to other saloons and had other drinks, afterwhich he swaggered through the streets to the door of the shop. Althoughhe was in his nature a spiritual bully, Jim did not lack energy, and hisemployer's shop was filled with work demanding attention. For a week bothhe and Joe had been returning to their work benches every evening. Jimwanted to come because some driving influence within made him love thethought of keeping the work always on the move, and Joe because Jim madehim come.

　　Many things were on the move in the striving, hustling town on thatevening. The system of checking on piece work, introduced by thesuperintendent Ed Hall in the corn-cutting machine plant, had broughton Bidwell's first industrial strike. The discontented workmen were notorganized, and the strike was foredoomed to failure, but it had stirredthe town deeply. One day, a week before, quite suddenly some fifty orsixty men had decided to quit. "We won't work for a fellow like Ed Hall,"they declared. "He sets a scale of prices and then, when we have drivenourselves to the limit to make a decent day's pay, he cuts the scale."Leaving the shop the men went in a body to Main Street and two or three ofthem, developing unexpected eloquence, began delivering speeches on streetcorners. On the next day the strike spread and for several days the shophad been closed. Then a labor organizer came from Cleveland and on the dayof his arrival the story ran through the street that strike breakers wereto be brought in.

　　And on that evening of many adventures another element was introduced intothe already disturbed life of the community. At the corner of Main andMcKinley Streets and just beyond the place where three old buildings werebeing torn down to make room for the building of a new hotel, appeared aman who climbed upon a box and attacked, not the piece work prices at thecorn-cutting machine plant, but the whole system that built and maintainedfactories where the wage scale of the workmen could be fixed by the whim ornecessity of one man or a group of men. As the man on the box talked, theworkmen in the crowd who were of American birth began to shake their heads.They went to one side and gathering in groups discussed the stranger'swords. "I tell you what," said a little old workman, pulling nervously athis graying mustache, "I'm on strike and I'm for sticking out until SteveHunter and Tom Butterworth fire Ed Hall, but I don't like this kind oftalk. I'll tell you what that man's doing. He's attacking our Government,that's what he's doing." The workmen went off to their homes grumbling. TheGovernment was to them a sacred thing, and they did not fancy having theirdemands for a better wage scale confused by the talk of anarchists andsocialists. Many of the laborers of Bidwell were sons and grandsons ofpioneers who had opened up the country where the great sprawling towns werenow growing into cities. They or their fathers had fought in the greatCivil War. During boyhood they had breathed a reverence for governmentout of the very air of the towns. The great men of whom the school-bookstalked had all been connected with the Government. In Ohio there had beenGarfield, Sherman, McPherson the fighter and others. From Illinois had comeLincoln and Grant. For a time the very ground of the mid-American countryhad seemed to spurt forth great men as now it was spurting forth gas andoil. Government had justified itself in the men it had produced.

　　And now there had come among them men who had no reverence for government.What a speaker for the first time dared say openly on the streets ofBidwell, had already been talked in the shops. The new men, the foreignerscoming from many lands, had brought with them strange doctrines. Theybegan to make acquaintances among the American workmen. "Well," they said,"you've had great men here; no doubt you have; but you're getting a newkind of great men now. These new men are not born out of people. They'rebeing born out of capital. What is a great man? He's one who has thepower. Isn't that a fact? Well, you fellows here have got to find out thatnowadays power comes with the possession of money. Who are the big men ofthis town?--not some lawyer or politician who can make a good speech, butthe men who own the factories where you have to work. Your Steve Hunter andTom Butterworth are the great men of this town."

　　The socialist, who had come to speak on the streets of Bidwell, was aSwede, and his wife had come with him. As he talked his wife made figureson a blackboard. The old story of the trick by which the citizens of thetown had lost their money in the plant-setting machine company was revivedand told over and over. The Swede, a big man with heavy fists, spoke of theprominent citizens of the town as thieves who by a trick had robbed theirfellows. As he stood on the box beside his wife, and raising his fistsshouted crude sentences condemning the capitalist class, men who had goneaway angry came back to listen. The speaker declared himself a workman likethemselves and, unlike the religious salvationists who occasionally spokeon the streets, did not beg for money. "I'm a workman like yourselves," heshouted. "Both my wife and myself work until we've saved a little money.Then we come out to some town like this and fight capital until we'rebusted. We've been fighting for years now and we'll keep on fighting aslong as we live."

　　As the orator shouted out his sentences he raised his fist as though tostrike, and looked not unlike one of his ancestors, the Norsemen, whoin old times had sailed far and wide over unknown seas in search of thefighting they loved. The men of Bidwell began to respect him. "After all,what he says sounds like mighty good sense," they declared, shaking theirheads. "Maybe Ed Hall isn't any worse than any one else. We got to breakup the system. That's a fact. Some of these days we got to break up thesystem."

　　* * * * *Jim Gibson got to the door of Joe's shop at half-past seven o'clock.Several men stood on the sidewalk and he stopped and stood before them,intending to tell again the story of his triumph over his employer. Insidethe shop Joe was already at his bench and at work. The men, two of themstrikers from the corn-cutting machine plant, complained bitterly of thedifficulty of supporting their families, and a third man, a fellow with abig black mustache who smoked a pipe, began to repeat some of the axiomsin regard to industrialism and the class war he had picked up from thesocialist orator. Jim listened for a moment and then, turning, put histhumb on his buttocks and wriggled his fingers. "Oh, hell," he sneered,"what are you fools talking about? You're going to get up a union or getinto the socialist party. What're you talking about? A union or a partycan't help a man who can't look out for himself."

　　The blustering and half intoxicated harness maker stood in the open shopdoor and told again and in detail the story of his triumph over hisemployer. Then another thought came and he spoke of the twelve hundreddollars Joe had lost in the stock, of the plant-setting machine company."He lost his money and you fellows are going to get licked in this fight,"he declared. "You're all wrong, you fellows, when you talk about unions orjoining the socialist party. What counts is what a man can do for himself.Character counts. Yes, sir, character makes a man what he is."

　　Jim pounded on his chest and glared about him.

　　"Look at me," he said. "I was a drunkard and down and out when I came tothis town; a drunkard, that's what I was and that's what I am. I came hereto this shop to work, and now, if you want to know, ask any one in town whoruns this place. The socialist says money is power. Well, there's a maninside here who has the money, but you bet I've got the power."

　　Slapping his knees with his hands Jim laughed heartily. A week before, atraveling man had come to the shop to sell machine-made harness. Joe hadordered the man out and Jim had called him back. He had placed an order foreighteen sets of the harness and had made Joe sign the order. The harnesshad arrived that afternoon and was now hung in the shop. "It's hanging inthe shop now," Jim cried. "Go see for yourself."

　　Triumphantly Jim walked up and down before the men on the sidewalk, andhis voice rang through the shop where Joe sat on his harness-maker's horseunder a swinging lamp hard at work. "I tell you, character's the thingthat counts," the roaring voice cried. "You see I'm a workingman like youfellows, but I don't join a union or a socialist party. I get my way. Myboss Joe in there's a sentimental old fool, that's what he is. All his lifehe's made harnesses by hand and he thinks that's the only way. He claims hehas pride in his work, that's what he claims."

　　Jim laughed again. "Do you know what he did the other day when thattraveler had gone out of the shop and after I had made him sign thatorder?" he asked. "Cried, that's what he did. By God, he did,--sat thereand cried."

　　Again Jim laughed, but the workmen on the sidewalk did not join in hismerriment. Going to one of them, the one who had declared his intention ofjoining the union, Jim began to berate him. "You think you can lick Ed Hallwith Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth back of him, eh?" he asked sharply."Well, I'll tell you what--you can't. All the unions in the world won'thelp you. You'll get licked--for why?

　　"For why? Because Ed Hall is like me, that's for why. He's got character,that's what he's got."

　　Growing weary of his boasting and the silence of his audience, Jim startedto walk in at the door, but when one of the workmen, a pale man of fiftywith a graying mustache, spoke, he turned to listen. "You're a suck, a suckand a lickspittle, that's what you are," said the pale man, his voicetrembling with passion.

　　Jim ran through the crowd of men and knocked the speaker to the sidewalkwith a blow of his fist. Two of the other workmen seemed about to take upthe cause of their fallen brother, but when in spite of their threats Jimstood his ground, they hesitated. They went to help the pale workman to hisfeet, and Jim went into the shop and closed the door. Climbing onto hishorse he went to work, and the men went off along the sidewalk, stillthreatening to do what they had not done when the opportunity offered.

　　Joe worked in silence beside his employee and night began to settle downover the disturbed town. Above the clatter of many voices in the streetoutside could be heard the loud voice of the socialist orator who had takenup his stand for the evening at a nearby corner. When it had become quitedark outside, the old harness maker climbed down from his horse and goingto the front door opened it softly and looked up and down the street. Thenhe closed it again and walked toward the rear of the shop. In his handhe held his harness-maker's knife, shaped like a half moon and with anextraordinarily sharp circular edge. The harness maker's wife had diedduring the year before and since that time he had not slept well at night.Often for a week at a time he did not sleep at all, but lay all night withwide-open eyes, thinking strange, new thoughts. In the daytime and when Jimwas not about, he sometimes spent hours sharpening the moon-shaped knife ona piece of leather; and on the day after the incident of the placing of theorder for the factory-made harness he had gone into a hardware store andbought a cheap revolver. He had been sharpening the knife as Jim talked tothe workmen outside. When Jim began to tell the story of his humiliation hehad stopped sewing at the broken harness in his vise and, getting up, hadtaken the knife from its hiding-place under a pile of leather on a bench togive its edge a few last caressing strokes.

　　Holding the knife in his hand Joe went with shambling steps toward theplace where Jim sat absorbed in his work. A brooding silence seemed to lieover the shop and even outside in the street all noises suddenly ceased.Old Joe's gait changed. As he passed behind the horse on which Jim sat,life came into his figure and he walked with a soft, cat-like tread. Joyshone in his eyes. As though warned of something impending, Jim turned andopened his mouth to growl at his employer, but his words never found theirway to his lips. The old man made a peculiar half step, half leap past thehorse, and the knife whipped through the air. At one stroke he hadsucceeded in practically severing Jim Gibson's head from his body.

　　There was no sound in the shop. Joe threw the knife into a corner and ranquickly past the horse where the body of Jim Gibson sat upright. Then thebody fell to the floor with a thump and there was the sharp rattle ofheels on the board floor. The old man locked the front door and listenedimpatiently. When all was again quiet he went to search for the knife hehad thrown away, but could not find it. Taking Jim's knife from a benchunder the hanging lamp, he stepped over the body and climbed upon his horseto turn out the lights.

　　For an hour Joe stayed in the shop with the dead man. The eighteen sets ofharness shipped from a Cleveland factory had been received that morning,and Jim had insisted they be unpacked and hung on hooks along the shopwalls. He had bullied Joe into helping hang the harnesses, and now Joe tookthem down alone. One by one they were laid on the floor and with Jim'sknife the old man cut each strap into little pieces that made a pile oflitter on the floor reaching to his waist. When that was done he went againto the rear of the shop, again stepping almost carelessly over the deadman, and took the revolver out of the pocket of an overcoat that hung bythe door.

　　Joe went out of the shop by the back door, and having locked it carefully,crept through an alleyway and into the lighted street where people walkedup and down. The next place to his own was a barber shop, and as he hurriedalong the sidewalk, two young men came out and called to him. "Hey," theycalled, "do you believe in factory-made harness now-days, Joe Wainsworth?Hey, what do you say? Do you sell factory-made harness?"

　　Joe did not answer, but stepping off the sidewalk, walked in the road. Agroup of Italian laborers passed, talking rapidly and making gestures withtheir hands. As he went more deeply into the heart of the growing city,past the socialist orator and a labor organizer who was addressing a crowdof men on another corner, his step became cat-like as it had been in themoment before the knife flashed at the throat of Jim Gibson. The crowds ofpeople frightened him. He imagined himself set upon by a crowd and hangedto a lamp-post. The voice of the labor orator arose above the murmur ofvoices in the street. "We've got to take power into our hands. We've got tocarry on our own battle for power," the voice declared.

　　The harness maker turned a corner into a quiet street, his hand caressingaffectionately the revolver in the side pocket of his coat. He intended tokill himself, but had not wanted to die in the same room with Jim Gibson.In his own way he had always been a very sensitive man and his only fearwas that rough hands fall upon him before he had completed the evening'swork. He was quite sure that had his wife been alive she would haveunderstood what had happened. She had always understood everything he didor said. He remembered his courtship. His wife had been a country girl andon Sundays, after their marriage, they had gone together to spend the dayin the wood. After Joe had brought his wife to Bidwell they continued thepractice. One of his customers, a well-to-do farmer, lived five miles northof town, and on his farm there was a grove of beech trees. Almost everySunday for several years he got a horse from the livery stable and took hiswife there. After dinner at the farmhouse, he and the farmer gossiped foran hour, while the women washed the dishes, and then he took his wife andwent into the beech forest. No underbrush grew under the spreading branchesof the trees, and when the two people had remained silent for a time,hundreds of squirrels and chipmunks came to chatter and play about them.Joe had brought nuts in his pocket and threw them about. The quiveringlittle animals drew near and then with a flip of their tails scamperedaway. One day a boy from a neighboring farm came to the wood and shotone of the squirrels. It happened just as Joe and his wife came from thefarmhouse and he saw the wounded squirrel hang from the branch of a tree,and then fall. It lay at his feet and his wife grew ill and leaned againsthim for support. He said nothing, but stared at the quivering thing on theground. When it lay still the boy came and picked it up. Still Joe saidnothing. Taking his wife's arm he walked to where they were in the habit ofsitting, and reached in his pocket for the nuts to scatter on the ground.The farm boy, who had felt the reproach in the eyes of the man and woman,had gone out of the wood. Suddenly Joe began to cry. He was ashamed and didnot want his wife to see, and she pretended she had not seen.

　　On the night when he had killed Jim, Joe decided he would walk to the farmand the beech forest and there kill himself. He hurried past a long row ofdark stores and warehouses in the newly built section of town and came toa residence street. He saw a man coming toward him and stepped into thestairway of a store building. The man stopped under a street lamp to lighta cigar, and the harness maker recognized him. It was Steve Hunter, whohad induced him to invest the twelve hundred dollars in the stock of theplant-setting machine company, the man who had brought the new timesto Bidwell, the man who was at the bottom of all such innovations asmachine-made harnesses. Joe had killed his employee, Jim Gibson, in coldanger, but now a new kind of anger took possession of him. Something dancedbefore his eyes and his hands trembled so that he was afraid the gun he hadtaken out of his pocket would fall to the sidewalk. It wavered as he raisedit and fired, but chance came to his assistance. Steve Hunter pitchedforward to the sidewalk.

　　Without stopping to pick up the revolver that had fallen out of his hand,Joe now ran up a stairway and got into a dark, empty hall. He felt hisway along a wall and came presently to another stairway, leading down.It brought him into an alleyway, and going along this he came out nearthe bridge that led over the river and into what in the old days had beenTurner's Pike, the road out which he had driven with his wife to the farmand the beech forest.

　　But one thing now puzzled Joe Wainsworth. He had lost his revolver and didnot know how he was to manage his own death. "I must do it some way," hethought, when at last, after nearly three hours steady plodding and hidingin fields to avoid the teams going along the road he got to the beechforest. He went to sit under a tree near the place where he had so oftensat through quiet Sunday afternoons with his wife beside him. "I'll rest alittle and then I'll think how I can do it," he thought wearily, holdinghis head in his hands. "I mustn't go to sleep. If they find me they'll hurtme. They'll hurt me before I have a chance to kill myself. They'll hurt mebefore I have a chance to kill myself," he repeated, over and over, holdinghis head in his hands and rocking gently back and forth.