Part 2

He shrank visibly and strode off to the corner where his peas were planted and started methodically hoeing the rows, turning the rich loam up about the pale stalks. Now and again a pebble clinked, he stooped and threw it off into the meadow. Mary, the youngest, came to the top of the steps and cried. Martha and Marjorie went to her, and he forgot them. The rising and falling of the hoe-blade, shiny with much polishing in the brown soil, hypnotized him, and his thoughts fell into a sort of rhythm, came and went without his interference. “Ridiculous!” he thought, “that this solemn singular biped, whom other bipeds for convenience call Andrew, should stand here with a stick and scratch the skin of this aged planet. What does he expect to get for it? It pleases the aged planet. She stretches herself in the twilight, purrs like an old cat, and expresses her pleasure in the odd and useful effluvium we call peas. And this biped wears clothes. Think of it! He wears clothes; things made out of plant-fibre and sheep’s wool cunningly and hideously made to fit his arms and legs. He has in his pocket--a small pouch made in these singular garments--a watch, a small shiny round object in which he has reduced to feeble but regular iambics the majestic motions of the sun, earth and stars. He takes it out and looks at it with an air of comprehension and puts it back again. Why doesn’t he laugh at himself?”... He chuckled.... “This object tells him that he has time for two more rows before dinner. Clink, clink. Damn these pebbles. My antediluvian anthropoid ape of an ancestor had to walk round them, they were so huge. He sat on them, cracked nuts against them, chattered with his family. He had no watch, and his trousers grew like grass.... Thank the Lord they’ve become pebbles.”

He sighed, and for a moment rested his chin on the hoe-handle, peering out towards the tree-encircled swamp. The hylas were beginning to jingle their elfin bells. A red-winged blackbird sailed in the last sunlight from one apple-tree to another.

“All a vicious circle--and all fascinating. Utterly preposterous and futile, but fascinating.”

He dropped the hoe and trundled the wheelbarrow to the edge of the strawberry-bed.

“Why can’t you stay where you’re put?” he said. “Why do you grow all over the place like this?”

With a trowel he began digging up the runners and placing them on the wheelbarrow. It delighted him to part the soft cool soil with his fingers, to thrust them sensitively among the finely filamented roots. The delicate snap, subterranean, of rootlets gave him a delicious pang. “Blood flows--but it’s all for the best; in the best of all possible worlds. Yield to me, strawberries, and you shall bear. I am the resurrection and the life.” When he had a sufficient pile of plants, he trundled the wheelbarrow to the new bed, exquisitely prepared, rich, warm, inviting. With the hoe he made a series of holes, and then, stooping, thrust the hairy roots back into the earth, pressing the soil tenderly about them. Then he rose, stretched his back, and lighted his pipe, shutting his left eye, and enshrining the flame, which danced, in the hollow of his stained hands. The cloud of smoke went up like incense.

“Water!” he cried. “Water! Water!”

Martha appeared, after a moment, bringing the watering-pot. She held it in front of her with both hands.

“Quick, Martha, before they die. Their tongues are turning black.”

“Silly!” Martha replied.

The earth about each plant was darkened with the tilted water, and the soiled leaves and stems were brightened.

“Listen, daddy! They’re smacking their lips.”

“They are pale, they have their eyes shut, they are reaching desperately down into the darkness for something to hold on to. They grope and tickle at atoms of soil, they shrink away from pebbles, they sigh and relax.”

“When the dew falls, they’ll sing.”

“Ha! ha! what fools we are.”

He flung the hoe across the wheelbarrow and started wheeling it towards the toolhouse.

“Bring the watering-pot.”

Martha ran after him and put it in the wheelbarrow.

“That’s right--add to my burden--never do anything that you can make somebody else do.”

Martha giggled in response and skipped towards the house. When she reached the stone steps she put her feet close together and with dark seriousness hopped up step after step in that manner. He watched her and smiled.

“O Lord, Lord,” he said, “what a circus we are.”

He trundled the bumping wheelbarrow and whistled. The red sun, enormous in the slight haze, was gashing itself cruelly on a black pine tree. The hylas, by now, had burst into full shrill-sweet chorus in the swamp, and of the birds all but a few scraping grackles were still. “Peace--peace--peace,” sang the hylas, a thousand at once. Silver bells, frailer than thimbles, ringing under a still and infinite sea of ether.... “Peace--peace,” he murmured. Then he dropped the wheelbarrow in horror, and put his hands to his ears. “The enemy!” he cried. “Martha! hurry! Martha!” This time Martha seemed to be out of earshot, so he was obliged to circumvent the enemy with great caution. The enemy was a toad who sat by preference near the toolhouse door: obese, sage, and wrinkled like a Chinese god. “Toad that under cold stone.” Marvelous compulsion of rhythm.... He thrust the wheelbarrow into the cool pleasant-smelling darkness of the toolhouse, and walked towards the kitchen door, which just at that moment Hilda opened.

“Hurry up,” she said. Her voice had a delicious mildness in the still air and added curiously to his already overwhelming sense of luxury. He had, for a moment, an extraordinarily satisfying sense of space.

III

He lifted his eyes from the pudding to the Hokusai print over the mantel.

“Think of it with shame! We sit here again grossly feeding our insatiable bellies, while Fujiyama, there, thrusts his copper-colored cone into a cobalt sky among whipped-cream clouds! Pilgrims, in the dusk, toil up his sides with staves. Pilgrims like ants. They struggle upwards in the darkness for pure love of beauty.”

“I don’t like bread-pudding,” ejaculated Mary solemnly, “it’s beany.”

Martha and Marjorie joined in a silvery cascade of giggles.

“Where _did_ she get that awful word!” said Hilda.

“Tom says it, mother.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake forget it.”

Mary stared gravely about the table, spoon in mouth, and then, removing the spoon, repeated, “It’s beany.”

He groaned, folding his napkin.

“What an awful affliction a family is. Why did we marry, Hilda? Life is a trap.”

“Mrs. Ferguson called this afternoon and presented me with a basket of green strawberries. I’m afraid she thought I wasn’t very appreciative. I hate to be interrupted when I’m sewing. Why under the sun does she pick them before they’re ripe?”

“That’s a nice way to treat a neighbor who gives you a present!... You _are_ an ungrateful creature.”

Hilda was languid.

“Well, I didn’t ask her for them.”

Her eyes gleamed with a slow provocative amusement.

“They’re beany,” said Mary.

He rolled his eyes at Mary.

“Our kids are too much with us. Bib and spoon, Feeding and spanking, we lay waste our powers!”

They all pushed back their chairs, laughing, and a moment later, as he lighted his cigar, he heard, from the music-room, Hilda’s violin begin with tremulous thin notes, oddly analogous to the sound of her voice when she sang, playing Bach to a methodical loud piano accompaniment by Martha. Melancholy came like a blue wave out of the dusk, lifted him, and broke slowly and deliciously over him. He stood for a moment, made motionless by the exquisite, intricate melody, stared, as if seeking with his eyes for the meaning of the silvery algebra of sound, and then went out.

The sun had set, darkness was at hand. He walked to the top of the stone steps and looked across the shallow valley towards the fading hill and the black water-tower. The trees on the crest, sharply silhouetted against a last band of pale light, looked like marching men. Lights winked at the base of the hill. And now, as hill and water-tower and trees became obscure, he began to see once more the dim phantasmal outlines of the dark city, the city submerged under the infinite sea, the city not inhabited by mortals. Immense, sinister and black, old and cold as the moon, were the walls that surrounded it. No gate gave entrance to it. Of a paler stone were the houses upon houses, tiers upon tiers of shadowy towers, which surmounted the walls. Not a light was to be seen in it, not a motion: it was still. He stared and stared at it, following with strained eyes the faint lines which might indicate its unlighted streets, seeking in vain, as always, to discover in the walls of it any sign of any window. It grew darker, it faded, a profound and vast secret, an inscrutable mystery.

“She is older than the rocks,” he murmured.

He turned away and walked over the lawn in the darkness, listening to the hylas, who seemed now to be saturating the hushed night with sound. “Peace--peace--peace--” they sang. _Pax vobiscum._ He gathered the croquet mallets and leaned them against the elm tree, swearing when he tripped over an unseen wicket. This done, he walked down the pale road, blowing clouds of smoke above him with uplifted face, and luxuriated in the sight of the dark tops of trees motionless against the stars. A soft skipping sound in the leaves at the road’s edge made him jump. He laughed to himself.... “He had no watch, and his trousers grew like grass....” He took out his watch and peered closely at it. The children were in bed, and Hilda was waiting for a game of chess. He walked back with his hands deep in his pockets. Pawn to king-four.

“Hilda! Wake up!”

Hilda opened her candid eyes without astonishment and sat up over the chess-board, on which the tiny men were already arranged.

“Goodness! How you scared me. What took you so long? I’ve been dreaming about Bluebeard.”

“Bluebeard! Good Heavens! I hope he didn’t look like me.”

“He did--remarkably!”

“A _nice_ thing to say to your husband.... Move! Hurry up!... I’m going to capture your king. Queens die young and fair.”

He smoked his pipe. Hilda played morosely. Delicious, she was when she was half asleep like this! She leaned her head on one hand, her elbow on the table.... When she had been checkmated at the end of half an hour she sank back wearily in her chair. She looked at him intently for a moment and began to smile.

“And how about the dark city tonight?” she asked. He took slow puffs at his pipe and stared meditatively at the ceiling.

“Ah--the dark city, Hilda! The city submerged under an infinite sea, the city not inhabited by mortals!... It was there again--would you believe it?... It was there.... I went out to the stone steps, smoking my cigar, while you played Bach. I hardly dared to look--I watched the hill out of the corner of my eyes and pretended to be listening to the music.... And suddenly, at the right moment of dusk, just after the street lamps had winked along the base of the hill, I saw it. The hill that we see there in the daylight, with its water-tower and marching trees, its green sloping fields and brook that flashes in the sun, is unreal, an illusion, the thinnest of disguises--a cloak of green velvet which the dark city throws over itself at the coming of the first ray of light.... I saw it distinctly. Immense, smooth and black, old and cold as the moon, are the walls that surround it. No gate gives entrance to it. Of a paler stone are the houses upon houses, tiers upon tiers of shadowy towers that surmount those sepulchral walls. No motion was perceptible there--no light gleamed there--no sound, no whisper rose from it. I thought: perhaps it is a city of the dead. The walls of it have no windows, and its inhabitants must be blind.... And then I seemed to see it more closely, in a twilight which appeared to be its own, and this closer perception gave way in turn to a vision. For first I saw that all the walls of it are moist, dripping, slippery, as if it were bathed in a deathlike dew; and then I saw its people. Its people are maggots--maggots of perhaps the size of human children; their heads are small and wedge-shaped, and glow with a faint bluish light. Masses of them swarm within those walls. Masses of them pour through the streets, glisten on the buttresses and parapets. They are intelligent. What horrible feast is it that nightly they celebrate there in silence? On what carrion do they feed? It is the universe that they devour; and they build above it, as they devour it, their dark city like a hollow tomb.... Extraordinary that this city, which seen from here at dusk has so supernatural a beauty, should hide at the core so vile a secret....”

Hilda stared at him.

“Really, Andrew, I think you’re going mad.”

“Going? I’m gone! My brain is maggoty.”

They laughed and rattled the chessmen into their wooden box. Then they began locking the doors and windows for the night.

[2] Copyright, 1922, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright, 1923, by Conrad Aiken.

I’M A FOOL[3]

By SHERWOOD ANDERSON

(From _The Dial_ and _The London Mercury_)

It was a hard jolt for me, one of the most bitterest I ever had to face. And it all came about through my own foolishness too. Even yet, sometimes, when I think of it, I want to cry or swear or kick myself. Perhaps, even now, after all this time, there will be a kind of satisfaction in making myself look cheap by telling of it.

It began at three o’clock one October afternoon as I sat in the grand stand at the fall trotting and pacing meet at Sandusky, Ohio.

To tell the truth, I felt a little foolish that I should be sitting in the grand stand at all. During the summer before I had left my home town with Harry Whitehead and, with a nigger named Burt, had taken a job as swipe with one of the two horses Harry was campaigning through the fall race meets that year. Mother cried and my sister Mildred, who wanted to get a job as a school teacher in our town that fall, stormed and scolded about the house all during the week before I left. They both thought it something disgraceful that one of our family should take a place as a swipe with race horses. I’ve an idea Mildred thought my taking the place would stand in the way of her getting the job she’d been working so long for.

But after all I had to work and there was no other work to be got. A big lumbering fellow of nineteen couldn’t just hang around the house and I had got too big to mow people’s lawns and sell newspapers. Little chaps who could get next to people’s sympathies by their sizes were always getting jobs away from me. There was one fellow who kept saying to everyone who wanted a lawn mowed or a cistern cleaned, that he was saving money to work his way through college, and I used to lay awake nights thinking up ways to injure him without being found out. I kept thinking of wagons running over him and bricks falling on his head as he walked along the street. But never mind him.

I got the place with Harry and I liked Burt fine. We got along splendid together. He was a big nigger with a lazy sprawling body and soft kind eyes, and when it came to a fight he could hit like Jack Johnson. He had Bucephalus, a big black pacing stallion that could do 2.09 or 2.10 if he had to, and I had a little gelding named Doctor Fritz that never lost a race all fall when Harry wanted him to win.

We set out from home late in July in a box car with the two horses and after that, until late November, we kept moving along to the race meets and the fairs. It was a peachy time for me, I’ll say that. Sometimes, now, I think that boys who are raised regular in houses, and never have a fine nigger like Burt for best friend, and go to high schools and college, and never steal anything or get drunk a little, or learn to swear from fellows who know how, or come walking up in front of a grand stand in their shirt sleeves and with dirty horsey pants on when the races are going on and the grand stand is full of people all dressed up-- What’s the use talking about it? Such fellows don’t know nothing at all. They’ve never had no opportunity.

But I did. Burt taught me how to rub down a horse and put the bandages on after a race and steam a horse out and a lot of valuable things for any man to know. He could wrap a bandage on a horse’s leg so smooth that if it had been the same color you would think it was his skin, and I guess he’d have been a big driver too and got to the top like Murphy and Walter Cox and the others if he hadn’t been black.

Gee whizz, it was fun. You got to a county seat town maybe, say, on a Saturday or Sunday, and the fair began the next Tuesday and lasted until Friday afternoon. Doctor Fritz would be, say, in the 2.25 trot on Tuesday afternoon and on Thursday afternoon Bucephalus would knock ’em cold in the “free-for-all” pace. It left you a lot of time to hang around and listen to horse talk, and see Burt knock some yap cold that got too gay, and you’d find out about horses and men and pick up a lot of stuff you could use all the rest of your life if you had some sense and salted down what you heard and felt and saw.

And then at the end of the week when the race meet was over, and Harry had run home to tend up to his livery stable business, you and Burt hitched the two horses to carts and drove slow and steady across country to the place for the next meeting so as to not over-heat the horses, etc., etc., you know.

Gee whizz, gosh amighty, the nice hickorynut and beechnut and oaks and other kinds of trees along the roads, all brown and red, and the good smells, and Burt singing a song that was called Deep River, and the country girls at the windows of houses and everything. You can stick your colleges up your nose for all me. I guess I know where I got my education.

Why, one of those little burgs of towns you come to on the way, say now, on a Saturday afternoon, and Burt says, “let’s lay up here.” And you did.

And you took the horses to a livery stable and fed them and you got your good clothes out of a box and put them on.

And the town was full of farmers gaping, because they could see you were race horse people, and the kids maybe never see a nigger before and was afraid and run away when the two of us walked down their main street.

And that was before prohibition and all that foolishness, and so you went into a saloon, the two of you, and all the yaps come and stood around, and there was always someone pretended he was horsey and knew things and spoke up and began asking questions, and all you did was to lie and lie all you could about what horses you had, and I said I owned them, and then some fellow said, “Will you have a drink of whiskey?” and Burt knocked his eye out the way he could say, offhand like, “Oh, well, all right, I’m agreeable to a little nip. I’ll split a quart with you.” Gee whizz.

But that isn’t what I want to tell my story about. We got home late in November and I promised mother I’d quit the race horses for good. There’s a lot of things you’ve got to promise a mother because she don’t know any better.

And so, there not being any work in our town any more than when I left there to go to the races, I went off to Sandusky and got a pretty good place taking care of the horses for a man who owned a teaming and delivery and storage business there. It was a pretty good place with good eats and a day off each week and sleeping on a cot in the big barn, and mostly just shoveling in hay and oats to a lot of big good-enough skates of horses that couldn’t have trotted a race with a toad. I wasn’t dissatisfied and I could send money home.

And then, as I started to tell you, the fall races come to Sandusky and I got the day off and I went. I left the job at noon and had on my good clothes and my new brown derby hat I’d just bought the Saturday before, and a stand-up collar.

First of all I went downtown and walked about with the dudes. I’ve always thought to myself, “put up a good front,” and so I did it. I had forty dollars in my pocket and so I went into the West House, a big hotel, and walked up to the cigar stand. “Give me three twenty-five cent cigars,” I said. There was a lot of horse men and strangers and dressed-up people from other towns standing around in the lobby and in the bar, and I mingled amongst them. In the bar there was a fellow with a cane and a Windsor tie on, that it made me sick to look at him. I like a man to be a man and dress up, but not to go put on that kind of airs. So I pushed him aside, kind of rough, and had me a drink of whiskey. And then he looked at me as though he thought maybe he’d get gay, but he changed his mind and didn’t say anything. And then I had another drink of whiskey, just to show him something, and went out and had a hack out to the races all to myself, and when I got there I bought myself the best seat I could get up in the grand stand, but didn’t go in for any of these boxes. That’s putting on too many airs.

And so there I was, sitting up in the grand stand as gay as you please and looking down on the swipes coming out with their horses and with their dirty horsey pants on and the horse blankets swung over their shoulders same as I had been doing all the year before. I liked one thing about the same as the other, sitting up there and feeling grand and being down there and looking up at the yaps and feeling grander and more important too. One thing’s about as good as another if you take it just right. I’ve often said that.