Book One: Chapter II

by Sherwood Anderson

　　Hugh McVey left the town of Mudcat Landing in early September of the yeareighteen eighty-six. He was then twenty years old and was six feet and fourinches tall. The whole upper part of his body was immensely strong but hislong legs were ungainly and lifeless. He secured a pass from the railroadcompany that had employed him, and rode north along the river in the nighttrain until he came to a large town named Burlington in the State of Iowa.There a bridge went over the river, and the railroad tracks joined those ofa trunk line and ran eastward toward Chicago; but Hugh did not continue hisjourney on that night. Getting off the train he went to a nearby hotel andtook a room for the night.

　　It was a cool clear evening and Hugh was restless. The town of Burlington,a prosperous place in the midst of a rich farming country, overwhelmed himwith its stir and bustle. For the first time he saw brick-paved streets andstreets lighted with lamps. Although it was nearly ten o'clock at nightwhen he arrived, people still walked about in the streets and many storeswere open.

　　The hotel where he had taken a room faced the railroad tracks and stood atthe corner of a brightly lighted street. When he had been shown to his roomHugh sat for a half hour by an open window, and then as he could not sleep,decided to go for a walk. For a time he walked in the streets where thepeople stood about before the doors of the stores but, as his tall figureattracted attention and he felt people staring at him, he went presentlyinto a side street.

　　In a few minutes he became utterly lost. He went through what seemed tohim miles of streets lined with frame and brick houses, and occasionallypassed people, but was too timid and embarrassed to ask his way. The streetclimbed upward and after a time he got into open country and followed aroad that ran along a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River. The nightwas clear and the sky brilliant with stars. In the open, away from themultitude of houses, he no longer felt awkward and afraid, and wentcheerfully along. After a time he stopped and stood facing the river.Standing on a high cliff and with a grove of trees at his back, the starsseemed to have all gathered in the eastern sky. Below him the water of theriver reflected the stars. They seemed to be making a pathway for him intothe East.

　　The tall Missouri countryman sat down on a log near the edge of the cliffand tried to see the water in the river below. Nothing was visible but abed of stars that danced and twinkled in the darkness. He had made his wayto a place far above the railroad bridge, but presently a through passengertrain from the West passed over it and the lights of the train looked alsolike stars, stars that moved and beckoned and that seemed to fly likeflocks of birds out of the West into the East.

　　For several hours Hugh sat on the log in the darkness. He decided that itwas hopeless for him to find his way back to the hotel, and was glad of theexcuse for staying abroad. His body for the first time in his life feltlight and strong and his mind was feverishly awake. A buggy in which sat ayoung man and woman went along the road at his back, and after the voiceshad died away silence came, broken only at long intervals during the hourswhen he sat thinking of his future by the barking of a dog in some distanthouse or the churning of the paddle-wheels of a passing river boat.

　　All of the early formative years of Hugh McVey's life had been spent withinsound of the lapping of the waters of the Mississippi River. He had seen itin the hot summer when the water receded and the mud lay baked and crackedalong the edge of the water; in the spring when the floods raged and thewater went whirling past, bearing tree logs and even parts of houses; inthe winter when the water looked deathly cold and ice floated past; and inthe fall when it was quiet and still and lovely, and seemed to have suckedan almost human quality of warmth out of the red trees that lined itsshores. Hugh had spent hours and days sitting or lying in the grass besidethe river. The fishing shack in which he had lived with his father until hewas fourteen years old was within a half dozen long strides of the river'sedge, and the boy had often been left there alone for a week at a time.When his father had gone for a trip on a lumber raft or to work for a fewdays on some farm in the country back from the river, the boy, left oftenwithout money and with but a few loaves of bread, went fishing when he washungry and when he was not did nothing but idle the days away in the grasson the river bank. Boys from the town came sometimes to spend an hour withhim, but in their presence he was embarrassed and a little annoyed. Hewanted to be left alone with his dreams. One of the boys, a sickly, pale,undeveloped lad of ten, often stayed with him through an entire summerafternoon. He was the son of a merchant in the town and grew quickly tiredwhen he tried to follow other boys about. On the river bank he lay besideHugh in silence. The two got into Hugh's boat and went fishing and themerchant's son grew animated and talked. He taught Hugh to write his ownname and to read a few words. The shyness that kept them apart had begun tobreak down, when the merchant's son caught some childhood disease and died.

　　In the darkness above the cliff that night in Burlington Hugh rememberedthings concerning his boyhood that had not come back to his mind in years.The very thoughts that had passed through his mind during those long daysof idling on the river bank came streaming back.

　　After his fourteenth year when he went to work at the railroad station Hughhad stayed away from the river. With his work at the station, and in thegarden back of Sarah Shepard's house, and the lessons in the afternoons,he had little idle time. On Sundays however things were different. SarahShepard did not go to church after she came to Mudcat Landing, but shewould have no work done on Sundays. On Sunday afternoons in the summer sheand her husband sat in chairs beneath a tree beside the house and went tosleep. Hugh got into the habit of going off by himself. He wanted to sleepalso, but did not dare. He went along the river bank by the road that ransouth from the town, and when he had followed it two or three miles, turnedinto a grove of trees and lay down in the shade.

　　The long summer Sunday afternoons had been delightful times for Hugh, sodelightful that he finally gave them up, fearing they might lead him totake up again his old sleepy way of life. Now as he sat in the darknessabove the same river he had gazed on through the long Sunday afternoons, aspasm of something like loneliness swept over him. For the first time hethought about leaving the river country and going into a new land with akeen feeling of regret.

　　On the Sunday afternoons in the woods south of Mudcat Landing Hugh had lainperfectly still in the grass for hours. The smell of dead fish that hadalways been present about the shack where he spent his boyhood, was goneand there were no swarms of flies. Above his head a breeze played throughthe branches of the trees, and insects sang in the grass. Everything abouthim was clean. A lovely stillness pervaded the river and the woods. He layon his belly and gazed down over the river out of sleep-heavy eyes intohazy distances. Half formed thoughts passed like visions through his mind.He dreamed, but his dreams were unformed and vaporous. For hours the halfdead, half alive state into which he had got, persisted. He did not sleepbut lay in a land between sleeping and waking. Pictures formed in hismind. The clouds that floated in the sky above the river took on strange,grotesque shapes. They began to move. One of the clouds separated itselffrom the others. It moved swiftly away into the dim distance and thenreturned. It became a half human thing and seemed to be marshaling theother clouds. Under its influence they became agitated and moved restlesslyabout. Out of the body of the most active of the clouds long vaporous armswere extended. They pulled and hauled at the other clouds making them alsorestless and agitated.

　　Hugh's mind, as he sat in the darkness on the cliff above the river thatnight in Burlington, was deeply stirred. Again he was a boy lying in thewoods above his river, and the visions that had come to him there returnedwith startling clearness. He got off the log and lying in the wet grass,closed his eyes. His body became warm.

　　Hugh thought his mind had gone out of his body and up into the sky to jointhe clouds and the stars, to play with them. From the sky he thought helooked down on the earth and saw rolling fields, hills and forests. He hadno part in the lives of the men and women of the earth, but was torn awayfrom them, left to stand by himself. From his place in the sky above theearth he saw the great river going majestically along. For a time it wasquiet and contemplative as the sky had been when he was a boy down belowlying on his belly in the wood. He saw men pass in boats and could heartheir voices dimly. A great quiet prevailed and he looked abroad beyond thewide expanse of the river and saw fields and towns. They were all hushedand still. An air of waiting hung over them. And then the river was whippedinto action by some strange unknown force, something that had come out of adistant place, out of the place to which the cloud had gone and from whichit had returned to stir and agitate the other clouds.

　　The river now went tearing along. It overflowed its banks and swept overthe land, uprooting trees and forests and towns. The white faces of drownedmen and children, borne along by the flood, looked up into the mind's eyeof the man Hugh, who, in the moment of his setting out into the definiteworld of struggle and defeat, had let himself slip back into the vaporousdreams of his boyhood.

　　As he lay in the wet grass in the darkness on the cliff Hugh tried to forcehis way back to consciousness, but for a long time was unsuccessful. Herolled and writhed about and his lips muttered words. It was useless. Hismind also was swept away. The clouds of which he felt himself a part flewacross the face of the sky. They blotted out the sun from the earth, anddarkness descended on the land, on the troubled towns, on the hills thatwere torn open, on the forests that were destroyed, on the peace and quietof all places. In the country stretching away from the river where all hadbeen peace and quiet, all was now agitation and unrest. Houses weredestroyed and instantly rebuilt. People gathered in whirling crowds.

　　The dreaming man felt himself a part of something significant and terriblethat was happening to the earth and to the peoples of the earth. Againhe struggled to awake, to force himself back out of the dream world intoconsciousness. When he did awake, day was breaking and he sat on the veryedge of the cliff that looked down upon the Mississippi River, gray now inthe dim morning light.

　　* * * * *The towns in which Hugh lived during the first three years after he beganhis eastward journey were all small places containing a few hundred people,and were scattered through Illinois, Indiana and western Ohio. All ofthe people among whom he worked and lived during that time were farmersand laborers. In the spring of the first year of his wandering he passedthrough the city of Chicago and spent two hours there, going in and out atthe same railroad station.

　　He was not tempted to become a city man. The huge commercial city at thefoot of Lake Michigan, because of its commanding position in the verycenter of a vast farming empire, had already become gigantic. He neverforgot the two hours he spent standing in the station in the heart of thecity and walking in the street adjoining the station. It was evening whenhe came into the roaring, clanging place. On the long wide plains west ofthe city he saw farmers at work with their spring plowing as the train wentflying along. Presently the farms grew small and the whole prairie dottedwith towns. In these the train did not stop but ran into a crowded networkof streets filled with multitudes of people. When he got into the big darkstation Hugh saw thousands of people rushing about like disturbed insects.Unnumbered thousands of people were going out of the city at the end oftheir day of work and trains waited to take them to towns on the prairies.They came in droves, hurrying along like distraught cattle, over a bridgeand into the station. The in-bound crowds that had alighted from throughtrains coming from cities of the East and West climbed up a stairway to thestreet, and those that were out-bound tried to descend by the same stairwayand at the same time. The result was a whirling churning mass of humanity.Every one pushed and crowded his way along. Men swore, women grew angry,and children cried. Near the doorway that opened into the street a longline of cab drivers shouted and roared.

　　Hugh looked at the people who were whirled along past him, and shiveredwith the nameless fear of multitudes, common to country boys in the city.When the rush of people had a little subsided he went out of the stationand, walking across a narrow street, stood by a brick store building.Presently the rush of people began again, and again men, women, and boyscame hurrying across the bridge and ran wildly in at the doorway leadinginto the station. They came in waves as water washes along a beach duringa storm. Hugh had a feeling that if he were by some chance to get caughtin the crowd he would be swept away into some unknown and terrible place.Waiting until the rush had a little subsided, he went across the street andon to the bridge to look at the river that flowed past the station. It wasnarrow and filled with ships, and the water looked gray and dirty. A pallof black smoke covered the sky. From all sides of him and even in the airabove his head a great clatter and roar of bells and whistles went on.

　　With the air of a child venturing into a dark forest Hugh went a littleway into one of the streets that led westward from the station. Again hestopped and stood by a building. Near at hand a group of young city roughsstood smoking and talking before a saloon. Out of a nearby building came ayoung girl who approached and spoke to one of them. The man began to swearfuriously. "You tell her I'll come in there in a minute and smash herface," he said, and, paying no more attention to the girl, turned to stareat Hugh. All of the young men lounging before the saloon turned to stare atthe tall countryman. They began to laugh and one of them walked quicklytoward him.

　　Hugh ran along the street and into the station followed by the shouts ofthe young roughs. He did not venture out again, and when his train wasready, got aboard and went gladly out of the great complex dwelling-placeof modern Americans.

　　Hugh went from town to town always working his way eastward, always seekingthe place where happiness was to come to him and where he was to achievecompanionship with men and women. He cut fence posts in a forest on a largefarm in Indiana, worked in the fields, and in one place was a section handon the railroad.

　　On a farm in Indiana, some forty miles east of Indianapolis, he was forthe first time powerfully touched by the presence of a woman. She was thedaughter of the farmer who was Hugh's employer, and was an alert, handsomewoman of twenty-four who had been a school teacher but had given up thework because she was about to be married. Hugh thought the man who was tomarry her the most fortunate being in the world. He lived in Indianapolisand came by train to spend the week-ends at the farm. The woman preparedfor his coming by putting on a white dress and fastening a rose in herhair. The two people walked about in an orchard beside the house or wentfor a ride along the country roads. The young man, who, Hugh had been told,worked in a bank, wore stiff white collars, a black suit and a black derbyhat.

　　On the farm Hugh worked in the field with the farmer and ate at table withhis family, but did not get acquainted with them. On Sunday when the youngman came he took the day off and went into a nearby town. The courtshipbecame a matter very close to him and he lived through the excitement ofthe weekly visits as though he had been one of the principals. The daughterof the house, sensing the fact that the silent farm hand was stirred byher presence, became interested in him. Sometimes in the evening as he saton a little porch before the house, she came to join him, and sat lookingat him with a peculiarly detached and interested air. She tried to maketalk, but Hugh answered all her advances so briefly and with such a halffrightened manner that she gave up the attempt. One Saturday evening whenher sweetheart had come she took him for a ride in the family carriage, andHugh concealed himself in the hay loft of the barn to wait for theirreturn.

　　Hugh had never seen or heard a man express in any way his affection for awoman. It seemed to him a terrifically heroic thing to do and he hoped byconcealing himself in the barn to see it done. It was a bright moonlightnight and he waited until nearly eleven o'clock before the lovers returned.In the hayloft there was an opening high up under the roof. Because of hisgreat height he could reach and pull himself up, and when he had done so,found a footing on one of the beams that formed the framework of the barn.The lovers stood unhitching the horse in the barnyard below. When the cityman had led the horse into the stable he hurried quickly out again and wentwith the farmer's daughter along a path toward the house. The two peoplelaughed and pulled at each other like children. They grew silent and whenthey had come near the house, stopped by a tree to embrace. Hugh saw theman take the woman into his arms and hold her tightly against his body.He was so excited that he nearly fell off the beam. His imagination wasinflamed and he tried to picture himself in the position of the youngcity man. His fingers gripped the boards to which he clung and his bodytrembled. The two figures standing in the dim light by the tree becameone. For a long time they clung tightly to each other and then drew apart.They went into the house and Hugh climbed down from his place on the beamand lay in the hay. His body shook as with a chill and he was half ill ofjealousy, anger, and an overpowering sense of defeat. It did not seem tohim at the moment that it was worth while for him to go further east or totry to find a place where he would be able to mingle freely with men andwomen, or where such a wonderful thing as had happened to the man in thebarnyard below might happen to him.

　　Hugh spent the night in the hayloft and at daylight crept out and went intoa nearby town. He returned to the farmhouse late on Monday when he was surethe city man had gone away. In spite of the protest of the farmer he packedhis clothes at once and declared his intention of leaving. He did not waitfor the evening meal but hurried out of the house. When he got into theroad and had started to walk away, he looked back and saw the daughter ofthe house standing at an open door and looking at him. Shame for what hehad done on the night before swept over him. For a moment he stared atthe woman who, with an intense, interested air stared back at him, andthen putting down his head he hurried away. The woman watched him out ofsight and later, when her father stormed about the house, blaming Hughfor leaving so suddenly and declaring the tall Missourian was no doubt adrunkard who wanted to go off on a drunk, she had nothing to say. In herown heart she knew what was the matter with her father's farm hand and wassorry he had gone before she had more completely exercised her power overhim.

　　* * * * *None of the towns Hugh visited during his three years of wanderingapproached realization of the sort of life Sarah Shepard had talked to himabout. They were all very much alike. There was a main street with a dozenstores on each side, a blacksmith shop, and perhaps an elevator for thestorage of grain. All day the town was deserted, but in the evening thecitizens gathered on Main Street. On the sidewalks before the stores youngfarm hands and clerks sat on store boxes or on the curbing. They did notpay any attention to Hugh who, when he went to stand near them, remainedsilent and kept himself in the background. The farm hands talked of theirwork and boasted of the number of bushels of corn they could pick in a day,or of their skill in plowing. The clerks were intent upon playing practicaljokes which pleased the farm hands immensely. While one of them talkedloudly of his skill in his work a clerk crept out at the door of one of thestores and approached him. He held a pin in his hand and with it jabbedthe talker in the back. The crowd yelled and shouted with delight. If thevictim became angry a quarrel started, but this did not often happen. Othermen came to join the party and the joke was told to them. "Well, you shouldhave seen the look on his face. I thought I would die," one of thebystanders declared.

　　Hugh got a job with a carpenter who specialized in the building of barnsand stayed with him all through one fall. Later he went to work as asection hand on a railroad. Nothing happened to him. He was like onecompelled to walk through life with a bandage over his eyes. On all sidesof him, in the towns and on the farms, an undercurrent of life went on thatdid not touch him. In even the smallest of the towns, inhabited only byfarm laborers, a quaint interesting civilization was being developed. Menworked hard but were much in the open air and had time to think. Theirminds reached out toward the solution of the mystery of existence. Theschoolmaster and the country lawyer read Tom Paine's "Age of Reason"and Bellamy's "Looking Backward." They discussed these books with theirfellows. There was a feeling, ill expressed, that America had somethingreal and spiritual to offer to the rest of the world. Workmen talked toeach other of the new tricks of their trades, and after hours of discussionof some new way to cultivate corn, shape a horseshoe or build a barn,spoke of God and his intent concerning man. Long drawn out discussions ofreligious beliefs and the political destiny of America were carried on.

　　And across the background of these discussions ran tales of action in asphere outside the little world in which the inhabitants of the townslived. Men who had been in the Civil War and who had climbed fighting overhills and in the terror of defeat had swum wide rivers, told the tale oftheir adventures.

　　In the evening, after his day of work in the field or on the railroad withthe section hands, Hugh did not know what to do with himself. That hedid not go to bed immediately after the evening meal was due to the factthat he looked upon his tendency to sleep and to dream as an enemy to hisdevelopment; and a peculiarly persistent determination to make somethingalive and worth while out of himself--the result of the five years ofconstant talking on the subject by the New England woman--had takenpossession of him. "I'll find the right place and the right people and thenI'll begin," he continually said to himself.

　　And then, worn out with weariness and loneliness, he went to bed in one ofthe little hotels or boarding houses where he lived during those years,and his dreams returned. The dream that had come that night as he lay onthe cliff above the Mississippi River near the town of Burlington, cameback time after time. He sat upright in bed in the darkness of his roomand after he had driven the cloudy, vague sensation out of his brain, wasafraid to go to sleep again. He did not want to disturb the people of thehouse and so got up and dressed and without putting on his shoes walked upand down in the room. Sometimes the room he occupied had a low ceiling andhe was compelled to stoop. He crept out of the house carrying his shoes inhis hand and sat down on the sidewalk to put them on. In all the towns hevisited, people saw him walking alone through the streets late at nightor in the early hours of the morning. Whispers concerning the matter ranabout. The story of what was spoken of as his queerness came to the menwith whom he worked, and they found themselves unable to talk freely andnaturally in his presence. At the noon hour when the men ate the lunch theyhad carried to work, when the boss was gone and it was customary among theworkers to talk of their own affairs, they went off by themselves. Hughfollowed them about. They went to sit under a tree, and when Hugh came tostand nearby, they became silent or the more vulgar and shallow among thembegan to show off. While he worked with a half dozen other men as a sectionhand on the railroad, two men did all the talking. Whenever the boss wentaway an old man who had a reputation as a wit told stories concerning hisrelations with women. A young man with red hair took the cue from him. Thetwo men talked loudly and kept looking at Hugh. The younger of the twowits turned to another workman who had a weak, timid face. "Well, you," hecried, "what about your old woman? What about her? Who is the father ofyour son? Do you dare tell?"

　　In the towns Hugh walked about in the evening and tried always to keep hismind fixed on definite things. He felt that humanity was for some unknownreason drawing itself away from him, and his mind turned back to the figureof Sarah Shepard. He remembered that she had never been without thingsto do. She scrubbed her kitchen floor and prepared food for cooking;she washed, ironed, kneaded dough for bread, and mended clothes. In theevening, when she made the boy read to her out of one of the school booksor do sums on a slate, she kept her hands busy knitting socks for him orfor her husband. Except when something had crossed her so that she scoldedand her face grew red, she was always cheerful. When the boy had nothing todo at the station and had been sent by the station master to work about thehouse, to draw water from the cistern for a family washing, or pull weedsin the garden, he heard the woman singing as she went about the doing ofher innumerable petty tasks. Hugh decided that he also must do small tasks,fix his mind upon definite things. In the town where he was employed asa section hand, the cloud dream in which the world became a whirling,agitated center of disaster came to him almost every night. Winter came onand he walked through the streets at night in the darkness and through thedeep snow. He was almost frozen; but as the whole lower part of his bodywas habitually cold he did not much mind the added discomfort, and so greatwas the reserve of strength in his big frame that the loss of sleep did notaffect his ability to labor all day without effort.

　　Hugh went into one of the residence streets of the town and counted thepickets in the fences before the houses. He returned to the hotel and madea calculation as to the number of pickets in all the fences in town. Thenhe got a rule at the hardware store and carefully measured the pickets. Hetried to estimate the number of pickets that could be cut out of certainsized trees and that gave his mind another opening. He counted the numberof trees in every street in town. He learned to tell at a glance and withrelative accuracy how much lumber could be cut out of a tree. He builtimaginary houses with lumber cut from the trees that lined the streets. Heeven tried to figure out a way to utilize the small limbs cut from the topsof the trees, and one Sunday went into the wood back of the town and cut agreat armful of twigs, which he carried to his room and later with greatpatience wove into the form of a basket.