Book I: Chapter III

by Sherwood Anderson

　　The town of Coal Creek was hideous. People from prosperous towns andcities of the middle west, from Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, going eastto New York or Philadelphia, looked out of the car windows and seeingthe poor little houses scattered along the hillside thought of booksthey had read of life in hovels in the old world. In chair-cars menand women leaned back and closed their eyes. They yawned and wishedthe journey would come to an end. If they thought of the town at allthey regretted it mildly and passed it off as a necessity of modernlife.

　　The houses on the hillside and the stores along Main Street belongedto the mining company. In its turn the mining company belonged to theofficials of the railroad. The manager of the mine had a brother whowas division superintendent. It was the mine manager who had stood bythe door of the mine when Cracked McGregor went to his death. He livedin a city some thirty miles away, and went there in the evening on thetrain. With him went the clerks and even the stenographers from theoffices of the mine. After five o'clock in the afternoon no whitecollars were to be seen upon the streets of Coal Creek.

　　In the town men lived like brutes. Dumb with toil they drank greedilyin the saloon on Main Street and went home to beat their wives. Amongthem a constant low muttering went on. They felt the injustice oftheir lot but could not voice it logically and when they thought ofthe men who owned the mine they swore dumbly, using vile oaths even intheir thoughts. Occasionally a strike broke out and Barney Butterlips,a thin little man with a cork leg, stood on a box and made speechesregarding the coming brotherhood of man. Once a troop of cavalry wasunloaded from the cars and with a battery paraded the main street. Thebattery was made up of several men in brown uniforms. They set up aGatling gun at the end of the street and the strike subsided.

　　An Italian who lived in a house on the hillside cultivated a garden.His place was the one beauty spot in the valley. With a wheelbarrow hebrought earth from the woods at the top of the hill and on Sunday hecould be seen going back and forth and whistling merrily. In thewinter he sat in his house making a drawing on a bit of paper. In thespring he took the drawing, and by it planted his garden, utilisingevery inch of his ground. When a strike came on he was told by themine manager to go on back to work or move out of his house. Hethought of the garden and the work he had done and went back to hisroutine of work in the mine. While he worked the miners marched up thehill and destroyed the garden. The next day the Italian also joinedthe striking miners.

　　In a little one-room shack on the hill lived an old woman. She livedalone and was vilely dirty. In her house she had old broken chairs andtables picked up about town and piled in such profusion that she couldscarcely move about. On warm days she sat in the sun before the shackchewing on a stick that had been dipped in tobacco. Miners coming upthe hill dumped bits of bread and meat-ends out of their dinner-pailsinto a box nailed to a tree by the road. These the old woman collectedand ate. When the soldiers came to town she walked along the streetjeering at them. "Pretty boys! Scabs! Dudes! Dry-goods clerks!" shecalled after them as she walked by the tails of their horses. A youngman with glasses on his nose, who was mounted on a grey horse turnedand called to his comrades, "Let her alone--it's old Mother Miseryherself."

　　When the tall red-haired boy looked at the workers and at the oldwoman who followed the soldiers he did not sympathise with them. Hehated them. In a way he sympathised with the soldiers. His blood wasstirred by the sight of them marching shoulder to shoulder. He thoughtthere was order and decency in the rank of uniformed men movingsilently and quickly along and he half wished they would destroy thetown. When the strikers made a wreck of the garden of the Italian hewas deeply touched and walked up and down in the room before hismother, proclaiming himself. "I would have killed them had it been mygarden," he said. "I would not have left one of them alive." In hisheart he like Cracked McGregor nursed his hatred of the miners and ofthe town. "The place is one to get out of," he said. "If a man doesn'tlike it here let him get up and leave." He remembered his fatherworking and saving for the farm in the valley. "They thought himcracked but he knew more than they. They would not have dared touch agarden he had planted."

　　In the heart of the miner's son strange half-formed thoughts began tofind lodgings. Remembering in his dreams at night the moving columnsof men in their uniforms he read new meaning into the scraps ofhistory picked up in the school and the movements of men in oldhistory began to have significance for him. On a summer afternoon ashe loitered before the town's hotel, beneath which was the saloon andbilliard room where the black-haired boy worked, he overheard two mentalking of the significance of men.

　　One of the men was an itinerant oculist who came to the mining townonce a month to fit and sell spectacles. When the oculist had soldseveral pairs of spectacles he got drunk, sometimes staying drunk fora week. When he was drunk he spoke French and Italian and sometimesstood in the barroom before the miners, quoting the poems of Dante.His clothes were greasy from long wear and he had a huge nose streakedwith red and purple veins. Because of his learning in the languagesand his quoting of poems the miners thought the oculist infinitelywise. To them it seemed that one with such a mind must have almostunearthly knowledge concerning the eyes and the fitting of glasses andthey wore with pride the cheap ill-fitting things he thrust upon them.

　　Occasionally, as though making a concession to his patrons, theoculist spent an evening among them. Once after reciting one of thesonnets of Shakespeare he put a hand on the bar and rocking gentlyback and forth sang in a drink-broken voice a ballad beginning "Theharp that once through Tara's halls the soul of music shed." After thesong he put his head down upon the bar and wept while the minerslooked on touched with sympathy.

　　On the summer afternoon when Beaut McGregor listened, the oculist wasengaged in a violent quarrel with another man, drunk like himself. Thesecond man was a slender dandified fellow of middle age who sold shoesfor a Philadelphia jobbing-house. He sat in a chair tilted against thehotel and tried to read aloud from a book. When he was fairly launchedin a long paragraph the oculist interrupted. Staggering up and downthe narrow board walk before the hotel the old drunkard raved andswore. He seemed beside himself with wrath.

　　"I am sick of such slobbering philosophy," he declared. "Even thereading of it makes you drool at the mouth. You do not say the wordssharply, and they can't be said sharply. I'm a strong man myself."

　　Spreading his legs wide apart and blowing up his cheeks, the oculistbeat upon his breast. With a wave of his hand he dismissed the man inthe chair.

　　"You but slobber and make a foul noise," he declared. "I know yourkind. I spit upon you. The Congress at Washington is full of suchfellows as is also the House of Commons in England. In France theywere once in charge. They ran things in France until the coming of aman such as myself. They were lost in the shadow of the greatNapoleon."

　　The oculist as though dismissing the dandified man from his mindturned to address Beaut. He talked in French and the man in the chairfell into a troubled sleep. "I am like Napoleon," the drunkarddeclared, breaking again into English. Tears began to show in hiseyes. "I take the money of these miners and I give them nothing. Thespectacles I sell to their wives for five dollars cost me but fifteencents. I ride over these brutes as Napoleon rode over Europe. Therewould be order and purpose in me were I not a fool. I am like Napoleonin that I have utter contempt for men."

　　* * * * *Again and again the words of the drunkard came back into the mind ofthe McGregor boy influencing his thoughts. Grasping nothing of thephilosophy back of the man's words his imagination was yet touched bythe drunkard's tale of the great Frenchman, babbled into his ears, andit in some way seemed to give point to his hatred of the disorganisedineffectiveness of the life about him.

　　* * * * *After Nance McGregor opened the bakery another strike came to disturbthe prosperity of the business. Again the miners walked idly throughthe streets. Into the bakery they came to get bread and told Nance towrite the debt down against them. Beaut McGregor was disturbed. He sawhis father's money being spent for flour which when baked into loaveswent out of the shop under the arms of the miners who shuffled as theywalked. One night a man whose name appeared on their books followed bya long record of charged loaves came reeling past the bakery. McGregorwent to his mother and protested. "They have money to get drunk," hesaid, "let them pay for their loaves."

　　Nance McGregor went on trusting the miners. She thought of the womenand children in the houses on the hill and when she heard of the plansof the mining company to evict the miners from their houses sheshuddered. "I was the wife of a miner and I will stick to them," shethought.

　　One day the mine manager came into the bakery. He leaned over theshowcase and talked to Nance. The son went and stood by his mother'sside to listen. "It has got to be stopped," the manager was saying. "Iwill not see you ruin yourself for these cattle. I want you to closethis place till the strike is over. If you won't close it I will. Thebuilding belongs to us. They did not appreciate what your husband didand why should you ruin yourself for them?"

　　The woman looked at him and answered in a low tone full of resolution."They thought he was crazy and he was," she said; "but what made himso--the rotten timbers in the mine that broke and crushed him. You andnot they are responsible for my man and what he was."

　　Beaut McGregor interrupted. "Well I think he is right," he declared,leaning over the counter beside his mother and looking into her face."The miners don't want better things for their families, they wantmore money to get drunk. We will close the doors here. We will put nomore money into bread to go into their gullets. They hated father andhe hated them and now I hate them also."

　　Beaut walked around the end of the counter and went with the minemanager to the door. He locked it and put the key into his pocket.Then he walked to the rear of the bake shop where his mother sat on abox weeping. "It is time a man took charge here," he said.

　　Nance McGregor and her son sat in the bakery and looked at each other.Miners came along the street, tried the door and went away grumbling.Word ran from lip to lip up the hillside. "The mine manager has closedNance McGregor's shop," said the women leaning over back fences.Children sprawling on the floors of the houses put up their heads andhowled. Their lives were a succession of new terrors. When a daypassed that a new terror did not shake them they went to bed happy.When the miner and his woman stood by the door talking in low tonesthey cried, expecting to be put to bed hungry. When guarded talk didnot go on by the door the miner came home drunk and beat the motherand the children lay in beds along the wall trembling with fright.

　　Late that night a party of miners came to the door of the bakery andbeat upon it with their fists. "Open up here!" they shouted. Beautcame out of the rooms above the bakery and stood in the empty shop.His mother sat in a chair in her room and trembled. He went to thedoor and unlocking it stepped out. The miners stood in groups on thewooden sidewalk and in the mud of the road. Among them stood the oldcrone who had walked beside the horses and shouted at the soldiers. Aminer with a black beard came and stood before the boy. Waving hishand at the crowd he said, "We have come to open the bakery. Some ofus have no ovens in our stoves. You give us the key and we will openthe place. We will break in the door if you don't want to do that. Thecompany can't blame you if we do it by force. You can keep account ofwhat we take. Then when the strike is settled we will pay you."

　　A flame shot into the eyes of the boy. He walked down the steps andstood among the miners. Thrusting his hands into his pockets he peeredinto their faces. When he spoke his voice resounded through thestreet, "You jeered at my father, Cracked McGregor, when he went intothe mine for you. You laughed at him because he saved his money anddid not spend it buying you drinks. Now you come here to get bread hismoney bought and you do not pay. Then you get drunk and go reelingpast this very door. Now let me tell you something." He thrust hishands into the air and shouted. "The mine manager did not close thisplace. I closed it. You jeered at Cracked McGregor, a better man thanany of you. You have had fun with me--laughing at me. Now I jeer atyou." He ran up the steps and unlocking the door stood in the doorway."Pay the money you owe this bakery and there will be bread for salehere," he called, and went in and locked the door.

　　The miners walked off up the street. The boy stood within the bakery,his hands trembling. "I've told them something," he thought, "I'veshown them they can't make a fool of me." He went up the stairway tothe rooms above. By the window his mother sat, her head in her hands,looking down into the street. He sat in a chair and thought of thesituation. "They will be back here and smash the place like they toreup that garden," he said.

　　The next evening Beaut sat in the darkness on the steps before thebakery. In his hands he held a hammer. A dull hatred of the town andof the miners burned in his brain. "I will make it hot for some ofthem if they come here," he thought. He hoped they would come. As helooked at the hammer in his hand a phrase from the lips of the drunkenold oculist babbling of Napoleon came into his mind. He began to thinkthat he also must be like the figure of which the drunkard had talked.He remembered a story the oculist had told of a fight in the streetsof a European city and muttered and waved the hammer about. Upstairshis mother sat by the window with her head in her hands. From thesaloon down the street a light gleamed out on the wet sidewalk. Thetall pale woman who had gone with him to the eminence overlooking thevalley came down the stairway from above the undertaker's shop. Sheran along the sidewalk. On her head she wore a shawl and as she ranshe clutched it with her hand. The other hand she held against herside.

　　When the women reached the boy who sat in silence before the bakeryshe put her hands on his shoulders and plead with him. "Come away,"she said. "Get your mother and come to our place. They're going tosmash you up here. You'll get hurt."

　　Beaut arose and pushed her away. Her coming had given him new courage.His heart jumped at the thought of her interest in him and he wishedthat the miners might come so that he could fight them before her. "Iwish I could live among people as decent as she," he thought.

　　A train stopped at the station down the street. There came the soundof tramping of men and quick sharp commands. A stream of men pouredout of the saloon onto the sidewalk. Down the street came a file ofsoldiers with guns swung across their shoulders. Again Beaut wasthrilled by the sight of trained orderly men moving along shoulder toshoulder. In the presence of these men the disorganized miners seemedpitifully weak and insignificant. The girl pulled the shawl about herhead and ran up the street to disappear into the stairway. The boyunlocked the door and went upstairs and to bed.

　　After the strike Nance McGregor who owned nothing but unpaid accountswas unable to open the bakery. A small man with a white moustache, whochewed tobacco, came from the mill and took the unused flour andshipped it away. The boy and his mother continued living above thebakery store room. Again she went in the morning to wash the windowsand scrub the floors in the offices of the mine and her red-haired sonstood upon the street or sat in the pool room and talked to the black-haired boy. "Next week I'll be going to the city and will begin makingsomething of myself," he said. When the time came to go he waited andidled in the streets. Once when a miner jeered at him for his idlenesshe knocked him into the gutter. The miners who hated him for hisspeech on the steps, admired him for his strength and brute courage.