Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life
nevertheless something to say to him. On the pile of railroad ties on
the summer evening, he waited expectantly. When the operator remained
silent and seemed to have changed his mind about talking, he tried to
make conversation. “Were you ever married, Mr. Williams?” he began. “I
suppose you were and your wife is dead, is that it?”
Wash Williams spat forth a succession of vile oaths. “Yes, she is
dead,” he agreed. “She is dead as all women are dead. She is a
living-dead thing, walking in the sight of men and making the earth
foul by her presence.” Staring into the boy’s eyes, the man became
purple with rage. “Don’t have fool notions in your head,” he commanded.
“My wife, she is dead; yes, surely. I tell you, all women are dead, my
mother, your mother, that tall dark woman who works in the millinery
store and with whom I saw you walking about yesterday—all of them, they
are all dead. I tell you there is something rotten about them. I was
married, sure. My wife was dead before she married me, she was a foul
thing come out a woman more foul. She was a thing sent to make life
unbearable to me. I was a fool, do you see, as you are now, and so I
married this woman. I would like to see men a little begin to
understand women. They are sent to prevent men making the world worth
while. It is a trick in Nature. Ugh! They are creeping, crawling,
squirming things, they with their soft hands and their blue eyes. The
sight of a woman sickens me. Why I don’t kill every woman I see I don’t
know.”
Half frightened and yet fascinated by the light burning in the eyes of
the hideous old man, George Willard listened, afire with curiosity.
Darkness came on and he leaned forward trying to see the face of the
man who talked. When, in the gathering darkness, he could no longer see
the purple, bloated face and the burning eyes, a curious fancy came to
him. Wash Williams talked in low even tones that made his words seem
the more terrible. In the darkness the young reporter found himself
imagining that he sat on the railroad ties beside a comely young man
with black hair and black shining eyes. There was something almost
beautiful in the voice of Wash Williams, the hideous, telling his story
of hate.
The telegraph operator of Winesburg, sitting in the darkness on the
railroad ties, had become a poet. Hatred had raised him to that
elevation. “It is because I saw you kissing the lips of that Belle
Carpenter that I tell you my story,” he said. “What happened to me may
next happen to you. I want to put you on your guard. Already you may be
having dreams in your head. I want to destroy them.”
Wash Williams began telling the story of his married life with the tall
blonde girl with the blue eyes whom he had met when he was a young
operator at Dayton, Ohio. Here and there his story was touched with
moments of beauty intermingled with strings of vile curses. The
operator had married the daughter of a dentist who was the youngest of
three sisters. On his marriage day, because of his ability, he was
promoted to a position as dispatcher at an increased salary and sent to
an office at Columbus, Ohio. There he settled down with his young wife
and began buying a house on the installment plan.
The young telegraph operator was madly in love. With a kind of
religious fervor he had managed to go through the pitfalls of his youth
and to remain virginal until after his marriage. He made for George
Willard a picture of his life in the house at Columbus, Ohio, with the
young wife. “In the garden back of our house we planted vegetables,” he
said, “you know, peas and corn and such things. We went to Columbus in
early March and as soon as the days became warm I went to work in the
garden. With a spade I turned up the black ground while she ran about
laughing and pretending to be afraid of the worms I uncovered. Late in
April came the planting. In the little paths among the seed beds she
stood holding a paper bag in her hand. The bag was filled with seeds. A
few at a time she handed me the seeds that I might thrust them into the
warm, soft ground.”
For a moment there was a catch in the voice of the man talking in the
darkness. “I loved her,” he said. “I don’t claim not to be a fool. I
love her yet. There in the dusk in the spring evening I crawled along
the black ground to her feet and groveled before her. I kissed her
shoes and the ankles above her shoes. When the hem of her garment
touched my face I trembled. When after two years of that life I found
she had managed to acquire three other lovers who came regularly to our
house when I was away at work, I didn’t want to touch them or her. I
just sent her home to her mother and said nothing. There was nothing to
say. I had four hundred dollars in the bank and I gave her that. I
didn’t ask her reasons. I didn’t say anything. When she had gone I
cried like a silly boy. Pretty soon I had a chance to sell the house
and I sent that money to her.”
Wash Williams and George Willard arose from the pile of railroad ties
and walked along the tracks toward town. The operator finished his tale
quickly, breathlessly.
“Her mother sent for me,” he said. “She wrote me a letter and asked me
to come to their house at Dayton. When I got there it was evening about
this time.”
Wash Williams’ voice rose to a half scream. “I sat in the parlor of
that house two hours. Her mother took me in there and left me. Their
house was stylish. They were what is called respectable people. There
were plush chairs and a couch in the room. I was trembling all over. I
hated the men I thought had wronged her. I was sick of living alone and
wanted her back. The longer I waited the more raw and tender I became.
I thought that if she came in and just touched me with her hand I would
perhaps faint away. I ached to forgive and forget.”
Wash Williams stopped and stood staring at George Willard. The boy’s
body shook as from a chill. Again the man’s voice became soft and low.
“She came into the room naked,” he went on. “Her mother did that. While
I sat there she was taking the girl’s clothes off, perhaps coaxing her
to do it. First I heard voices at the door that led into a little
hallway and then it opened softly. The girl was ashamed and stood
perfectly still staring at the floor. The mother didn’t come into the
room. When she had pushed the girl in through the door she stood in the
hallway waiting, hoping we would—well, you see—waiting.”
George Willard and the telegraph operator came into the main street of
Winesburg. The lights from the store windows lay bright and shining on
the sidewalks. People moved about laughing and talking. The young
reporter felt ill and weak. In imagination, he also became old and
shapeless. “I didn’t get the mother killed,” said Wash Williams,
staring up and down the street. “I struck her once with a chair and
then the neighbors came in and took it away. She screamed so loud you
see. I won’t ever have a chance to kill her now. She died of a fever a
month after that happened.”
THE THINKER
The house in which Seth Richmond of Winesburg lived with his mother had
been at one time the show place of the town, but when young Seth lived
there its glory had become somewhat dimmed. The huge brick house which
Banker White had built on Buckeye Street had overshadowed it. The
Richmond place was in a little valley far out at the end of Main
Street. Farmers coming into town by a dusty road from the south passed
by a grove of walnut trees, skirted the Fair Ground with its high board
fence covered with advertisements, and trotted their horses down
through the valley past the Richmond place into town. As much of the
country north and south of Winesburg was devoted to fruit and berry
raising, Seth saw wagon-loads of berry pickers—boys, girls, and
women—going to the fields in the morning and returning covered with
dust in the evening. The chattering crowd, with their rude jokes cried
out from wagon to wagon, sometimes irritated him sharply. He regretted
that he also could not laugh boisterously, shout meaningless jokes and
make of himself a figure in the endless stream of moving, giggling
activity that went up and down the road.
The Richmond house was built of limestone, and, although it was said in
the village to have become run down, had in reality grown more
beautiful with every passing year. Already time had begun a little to
color the stone, lending a golden richness to its surface and in the
evening or on dark days touching the shaded places beneath the eaves
with wavering patches of browns and blacks.
The house had been built by Seth’s grandfather, a stone quarryman, and
it, together with the stone quarries on Lake Erie eighteen miles to the
north, had been left to his son, Clarence Richmond, Seth’s father.
Clarence Richmond, a quiet passionate man extraordinarily admired by
his neighbors, had been killed in a street fight with the editor of a
newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. The fight concerned the publication of
Clarence Richmond’s name coupled with that of a woman school teacher,
and as the dead man had begun the row by firing upon the editor, the
effort to punish the slayer was unsuccessful. After the quarryman’s
death it was found that much of the money left to him had been
squandered in speculation and in insecure investments made through the
influence of friends.
Left with but a small income, Virginia Richmond had settled down to a
retired life in the village and to the raising of her son. Although she
had been deeply moved by the death of the husband and father, she did
not at all believe the stories concerning him that ran about after his
death. To her mind, the sensitive, boyish man whom all had
instinctively loved, was but an unfortunate, a being too fine for
everyday life. “You’ll be hearing all sorts of stories, but you are not
to believe what you hear,” she said to her son. “He was a good man,
full of tenderness for everyone, and should not have tried to be a man
of affairs. No matter how much I were to plan and dream of your future,
I could not imagine anything better for you than that you turn out as
good a man as your father.”
Several years after the death of her husband, Virginia Richmond had
become alarmed at the growing demands upon her income and had set
herself to the task of increasing it. She had learned stenography and
through the influence of her husband’s friends got the position of
court stenographer at the county seat. There she went by train each
morning during the sessions of the court, and when no court sat, spent
her days working among the rosebushes in her garden. She was a tall,
straight figure of a woman with a plain face and a great mass of brown
hair.
In the relationship between Seth Richmond and his mother, there was a
quality that even at eighteen had begun to color all of his traffic
with men. An almost unhealthy respect for the youth kept the mother for
the most part silent in his presence. When she did speak sharply to him
he had only to look steadily into her eyes to see dawning there the
puzzled look he had already noticed in the eyes of others when he
looked at them.
The truth was that the son thought with remarkable clearness and the
mother did not. She expected from all people certain conventional
reactions to life. A boy was your son, you scolded him and he trembled
and looked at the floor. When you had scolded enough he wept and all
was forgiven. After the weeping and when he had gone to bed, you crept
into his room and kissed him.
Virginia Richmond could not understand why her son did not do these
things. After the severest reprimand, he did not tremble and look at
the floor but instead looked steadily at her, causing uneasy doubts to
invade her mind. As for creeping into his room—after Seth had passed