Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life
you together I will break your bones and his too,” he added. The
bartender had come to woo, not to threaten, and was angry with himself
because of his failure.
When her lover had departed Belle went indoors and ran hurriedly
upstairs. From a window at the upper part of the house she saw Ed
Handby cross the street and sit down on a horse block before the house
of a neighbor. In the dim light the man sat motionless holding his head
in his hands. She was made happy by the sight, and when George Willard
came to the door she greeted him effusively and hurriedly put on her
hat. She thought that, as she walked through the streets with young
Willard, Ed Handby would follow and she wanted to make him suffer.
For an hour Belle Carpenter and the young reporter walked about under
the trees in the sweet night air. George Willard was full of big words.
The sense of power that had come to him during the hour in the darkness
in the alleyway remained with him and he talked boldly, swaggering
along and swinging his arms about. He wanted to make Belle Carpenter
realize that he was aware of his former weakness and that he had
changed. “You’ll find me different,” he declared, thrusting his hands
into his pockets and looking boldly into her eyes. “I don’t know why
but it is so. You’ve got to take me for a man or let me alone. That’s
how it is.”
Up and down the quiet streets under the new moon went the woman and the
boy. When George had finished talking they turned down a side street
and went across a bridge into a path that ran up the side of a hill.
The hill began at Waterworks Pond and climbed upward to the Winesburg
Fair Grounds. On the hillside grew dense bushes and small trees and
among the bushes were little open spaces carpeted with long grass, now
stiff and frozen.
As he walked behind the woman up the hill George Willard’s heart began
to beat rapidly and his shoulders straightened. Suddenly he decided
that Belle Carpenter was about to surrender herself to him. The new
force that had manifested itself in him had, he felt, been at work upon
her and had led to her conquest. The thought made him half drunk with
the sense of masculine power. Although he had been annoyed that as they
walked about she had not seemed to be listening to his words, the fact
that she had accompanied him to this place took all his doubts away.
“It is different. Everything has become different,” he thought and
taking hold of her shoulder turned her about and stood looking at her,
his eyes shining with pride.
Belle Carpenter did not resist. When he kissed her upon the lips she
leaned heavily against him and looked over his shoulder into the
darkness. In her whole attitude there was a suggestion of waiting.
Again, as in the alleyway, George Willard’s mind ran off into words
and, holding the woman tightly he whispered the words into the still
night. “Lust,” he whispered, “lust and night and women.”
George Willard did not understand what happened to him that night on
the hillside. Later, when he got to his own room, he wanted to weep and
then grew half insane with anger and hate. He hated Belle Carpenter and
was sure that all his life he would continue to hate her. On the
hillside he had led the woman to one of the little open spaces among
the bushes and had dropped to his knees beside her. As in the vacant
lot, by the laborers’ houses, he had put up his hands in gratitude for
the new power in himself and was waiting for the woman to speak when Ed
Handby appeared.
The bartender did not want to beat the boy, who he thought had tried to
take his woman away. He knew that beating was unnecessary, that he had
power within himself to accomplish his purpose without using his fists.
Gripping George by the shoulder and pulling him to his feet, he held
him with one hand while he looked at Belle Carpenter seated on the
grass. Then with a quick wide movement of his arm he sent the younger
man sprawling away into the bushes and began to bully the woman, who
had risen to her feet. “You’re no good,” he said roughly. “I’ve half a
mind not to bother with you. I’d let you alone if I didn’t want you so
much.”
On his hands and knees in the bushes George Willard stared at the scene
before him and tried hard to think. He prepared to spring at the man
who had humiliated him. To be beaten seemed to be infinitely better
than to be thus hurled ignominiously aside.
Three times the young reporter sprang at Ed Handby and each time the
bartender, catching him by the shoulder, hurled him back into the
bushes. The older man seemed prepared to keep the exercise going
indefinitely but George Willard’s head struck the root of a tree and he
lay still. Then Ed Handby took Belle Carpenter by the arm and marched
her away.
George heard the man and woman making their way through the bushes. As
he crept down the hillside his heart was sick within him. He hated
himself and he hated the fate that had brought about his humiliation.
When his mind went back to the hour alone in the alleyway he was
puzzled and stopping in the darkness listened, hoping to hear again the
voice outside himself that had so short a time before put new courage
into his heart. When his way homeward led him again into the street of
frame houses he could not bear the sight and began to run, wanting to
get quickly out of the neighborhood that now seemed to him utterly
squalid and commonplace.
“QUEER”
From his seat on a box in the rough board shed that stuck like a burr
on the rear of Cowley & Son’s store in Winesburg, Elmer Cowley, the
junior member of the firm, could see through a dirty window into the
printshop of the _Winesburg Eagle_. Elmer was putting new shoelaces in
his shoes. They did not go in readily and he had to take the shoes off.
With the shoes in his hand he sat looking at a large hole in the heel
of one of his stockings. Then looking quickly up he saw George Willard,
the only newspaper reporter in Winesburg, standing at the back door of
the _Eagle_ printshop and staring absentmindedly about. “Well, well,
what next!” exclaimed the young man with the shoes in his hand, jumping
to his feet and creeping away from the window.
A flush crept into Elmer Cowley’s face and his hands began to tremble.
In Cowley & Son’s store a Jewish traveling salesman stood by the
counter talking to his father. He imagined the reporter could hear what
was being said and the thought made him furious. With one of the shoes
still held in his hand he stood in a corner of the shed and stamped
with a stockinged foot upon the board floor.
Cowley & Son’s store did not face the main street of Winesburg. The
front was on Maumee Street and beyond it was Voight’s wagon shop and a
shed for the sheltering of farmers’ horses. Beside the store an
alleyway ran behind the main street stores and all day drays and
delivery wagons, intent on bringing in and taking out goods, passed up
and down. The store itself was indescribable. Will Henderson once said
of it that it sold everything and nothing. In the window facing Maumee
Street stood a chunk of coal as large as an apple barrel, to indicate
that orders for coal were taken, and beside the black mass of the coal
stood three combs of honey grown brown and dirty in their wooden
frames.
The honey had stood in the store window for six months. It was for sale
as were also the coat hangers, patent suspender buttons, cans of roof
paint, bottles of rheumatism cure, and a substitute for coffee that
companioned the honey in its patient willingness to serve the public.
Ebenezer Cowley, the man who stood in the store listening to the eager
patter of words that fell from the lips of the traveling man, was tall
and lean and looked unwashed. On his scrawny neck was a large wen
partially covered by a grey beard. He wore a long Prince Albert coat.
The coat had been purchased to serve as a wedding garment. Before he
became a merchant Ebenezer was a farmer and after his marriage he wore
the Prince Albert coat to church on Sundays and on Saturday afternoons
when he came into town to trade. When he sold the farm to become a
merchant he wore the coat constantly. It had become brown with age and
was covered with grease spots, but in it Ebenezer always felt dressed
up and ready for the day in town.
As a merchant Ebenezer was not happily placed in life and he had not
been happily placed as a farmer. Still he existed. His family,
consisting of a daughter named Mabel and the son, lived with him in
rooms above the store and it did not cost them much to live. His
troubles were not financial. His unhappiness as a merchant lay in the
fact that when a traveling man with wares to be sold came in at the
front door he was afraid. Behind the counter he stood shaking his head.
He was afraid, first that he would stubbornly refuse to buy and thus
lose the opportunity to sell again; second that he would not be
stubborn enough and would in a moment of weakness buy what could not be
sold.
In the store on the morning when Elmer Cowley saw George Willard
standing and apparently listening at the back door of the _Eagle_
printshop, a situation had arisen that always stirred the son’s wrath.
The traveling man talked and Ebenezer listened, his whole figure
expressing uncertainty. “You see how quickly it is done,” said the
traveling man, who had for sale a small flat metal substitute for
collar buttons. With one hand he quickly unfastened a collar from his
shirt and then fastened it on again. He assumed a flattering wheedling
tone. “I tell you what, men have come to the end of all this fooling
with collar buttons and you are the man to make money out of the change
that is coming. I am offering you the exclusive agency for this town.
Take twenty dozen of these fasteners and I’ll not visit any other
store. I’ll leave the field to you.”
The traveling man leaned over the counter and tapped with his finger on
Ebenezer’s breast. “It’s an opportunity and I want you to take it,” he
urged. “A friend of mine told me about you. ‘See that man Cowley,’ he
said. ‘He’s a live one.’”
The traveling man paused and waited. Taking a book from his pocket he
began writing out the order. Still holding the shoe in his hand Elmer
Cowley went through the store, past the two absorbed men, to a glass
showcase near the front door. He took a cheap revolver from the case
and began to wave it about. “You get out of here!” he shrieked. “We
don’t want any collar fasteners here.” An idea came to him. “Mind, I’m
not making any threat,” he added. “I don’t say I’ll shoot. Maybe I just
took this gun out of the case to look at it. But you better get out.
Yes sir, I’ll say that. You better grab up your things and get out.”
The young storekeeper’s voice rose to a scream and going behind the
counter he began to advance upon the two men. “We’re through being
fools here!” he cried. “We ain’t going to buy any more stuff until we
begin to sell. We ain’t going to keep on being queer and have folks
staring and listening. You get out of here!”
The traveling man left. Raking the samples of collar fasteners off the
counter into a black leather bag, he ran. He was a small man and very
bow-legged and he ran awkwardly. The black bag caught against the door
and he stumbled and fell. “Crazy, that’s what he is—crazy!” he
sputtered as he arose from the sidewalk and hurried away.
In the store Elmer Cowley and his father stared at each other. Now that
the immediate object of his wrath had fled, the younger man was
embarrassed. “Well, I meant it. I think we’ve been queer long enough,”
he declared, going to the showcase and replacing the revolver. Sitting
on a barrel he pulled on and fastened the shoe he had been holding in
his hand. He was waiting for some word of understanding from his father