Winesburg, Ohio

S >> Sherwood Anderson >> Winesburg, Ohio


Ordinarily George Willard would have been intensely
interested in the boasting of Moyer, the horseman. Now
it made him angry. He turned and hurried away along the
street. "Old windbag," he sputtered. "Why does he want
to be bragging? Why don't he shut up?"

George went into a vacant lot and, as he hurried along,
fell over a pile of rubbish. A nail protruding from an
empty barrel tore his trousers. He sat down on the
ground and swore. With a pin he mended the torn place
and then arose and went on. "I'll go to Helen White's
house, that's what I'll do. I'll walk right in. I'll
say that I want to see her. I'll walk right in and sit
down, that's what I'll do," he declared, climbing over
a fence and beginning to run.

* * *

On the veranda of Banker White's house Helen was
restless and distraught. The instructor sat between the
mother and daughter. His talk wearied the girl.
Although he had also been raised in an Ohio town, the
instructor began to put on the airs of the city. He
wanted to appear cosmopolitan. "I like the chance you
have given me to study the background out of which most
of our girls come," he declared. "It was good of you,
Mrs. White, to have me down for the day." He turned to
Helen and laughed. "Your life is still bound up with
the life of this town?" he asked. "There are people
here in whom you are interested?" To the girl his voice
sounded pompous and heavy.

Helen arose and went into the house. At the door
leading to a garden at the back she stopped and stood
listening. Her mother began to talk. "There is no one
here fit to associate with a girl of Helen's breeding,"
she said.

Helen ran down a flight of stairs at the back of the
house and into the garden. In the darkness she stopped
and stood trembling. It seemed to her that the world
was full of meaningless people saying words. Afire with
eagerness she ran through a garden gate and, turning a
corner by the banker's barn, went into a little side
street. "George! Where are you, George?" she cried,
filled with nervous excitement. She stopped running,
and leaned against a tree to laugh hysterically. Along
the dark little street came George Willard, still
saying words. "I'm going to walk right into her house.
I'll go right in and sit down," he declared as he came
up to her. He stopped and stared stupidly. "Come on,"
he said and took hold of her hand. With hanging heads
they walked away along the street under the trees. Dry
leaves rustled under foot. Now that he had found her
George wondered what he had better do and say.

* * *

At the upper end of the Fair Ground, in Winesburg,
there is a half decayed old grand-stand. It has never
been painted and the boards are all warped out of
shape. The Fair Ground stands on top of a low hill
rising out of the valley of Wine Creek and from the
grand-stand one can see at night, over a cornfield, the
lights of the town reflected against the sky.

George and Helen climbed the hill to the Fair Ground,
coming by the path past Waterworks Pond. The feeling of
loneliness and isolation that had come to the young man
in the crowded streets of his town was both broken and
intensified by the presence of Helen. What he felt was
reflected in her.

In youth there are always two forces fighting in
people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles
against the thing that reflects and remembers, and the
older, the more sophisticated thing had possession of
George Willard. Sensing his mood, Helen walked beside
him filled with respect. When they got to the
grand-stand they climbed up under the roof and sat down
on one of the long bench-like seats.

There is something memorable in the experience to be
had by going into a fair ground that stands at the edge
of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual
fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be
forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead,
but of living people. Here, during the day just passed,
have come the people pouring in from the town and the
country around. Farmers with their wives and children
and all the people from the hundreds of little frame
houses have gathered within these board walls. Young
girls have laughed and men with beards have talked of
the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled
to overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed
with life and now it is night and the life has all gone
away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals
oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree
and what there is of a reflective tendency in his
nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of
the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant,
and if the people of the town are his people, one loves
life so intensely that tears come into the eyes.

In the darkness under the roof of the grand-stand,
George Willard sat beside Helen White and felt very
keenly his own insignificance in the scheme of
existence. Now that he had come out of town where the
presence of the people stirring about, busy with a
multitude of affairs, had been so irritating, the
irritation was all gone. The presence of Helen renewed
and refreshed him. It was as though her woman's hand
was assisting him to make some minute readjustment of
the machinery of his life. He began to think of the
people in the town where he had always lived with
something like reverence. He had reverence for Helen.
He wanted to love and to be loved by her, but he did
not want at the moment to be confused by her womanhood.
In the darkness he took hold of her hand and when she
crept close put a hand on her shoulder. A wind began to
blow and he shivered. With all his strength he tried to
hold and to understand the mood that had come upon him.
In that high place in the darkness the two oddly
sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and
waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I
have come to this lonely place and here is this other,"
was the substance of the thing felt.

In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into
the long night of the late fall. Farm horses jogged
away along lonely country roads pulling their portion
of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods
in off the sidewalks and lock the doors of stores. In
the Opera House a crowd had gathered to see a show and
further down Main Street the fiddlers, their
instruments tuned, sweated and worked to keep the feet
of youth flying over a dance floor.

In the darkness in the grand-stand Helen White and
George Willard remained silent. Now and then the spell
that held them was broken and they turned and tried in
the dim light to see into each other's eyes. They
kissed but that impulse did not last. At the upper end
of the Fair Ground a half dozen men worked over horses
that had raced during the afternoon. The men had built
a fire and were heating kettles of water. Only their
legs could be seen as they passed back and forth in the
light. When the wind blew the little flames of the fire
danced crazily about.

George and Helen arose and walked away into the
darkness. They went along a path past a field of corn
that had not yet been cut. The wind whispered among the
dry corn blades. For a moment during the walk back into
town the spell that held them was broken. When they had
come to the crest of Waterworks Hill they stopped by a
tree and George again put his hands on the girl's
shoulders. She embraced him eagerly and then again they
drew quickly back from that impulse. They stopped
kissing and stood a little apart. Mutual respect grew
big in them. They were both embarrassed and to relieve
their embarrassment dropped into the animalism of
youth. They laughed and began to pull and haul at each
other. In some way chastened and purified by the mood
they had been in, they became, not man and woman, not
boy and girl, but excited little animals.

It was so they went down the hill. In the darkness
they played like two splendid young things in a young
world. Once, running swiftly forward, Helen tripped
George and he fell. He squirmed and shouted. Shaking
with laughter, he roiled down the hill. Helen ran after
him. For just a moment she stopped in the darkness.
There was no way of knowing what woman's thoughts went
through her mind but, when the bottom of the hill was
reached and she came up to the boy, she took his arm
and walked beside him in dignified silence. For some
reason they could not have explained they had both got
from their silent evening together the thing needed.
Man or boy, woman or girl, they had for a moment taken
hold of the thing that makes the mature life of men and
women in the modern world possible.



DEPARTURE

Young George Willard got out of bed at four in the
morning. It was April and the young tree leaves were
just coming out of their buds. The trees along the
residence streets in Winesburg are maple and the seeds
are winged. When the wind blows they whirl crazily
about, filling the air and making a carpet underfoot.

George came downstairs into the hotel office carrying a
brown leather bag. His trunk was packed for departure.
Since two o'clock he had been awake thinking of the
journey he was about to take and wondering what he
would find at the end of his journey. The boy who slept
in the hotel office lay on a cot by the door. His mouth
was open and he snored lustily. George crept past the
cot and went out into the silent deserted main street.
The east was pink with the dawn and long streaks of
light climbed into the sky where a few stars still
shone.

Beyond the last house on Trunion Pike in Winesburg
there is a great stretch of open fields. The fields are
owned by farmers who live in town and drive homeward at
evening along Trunion Pike in light creaking wagons. In
the fields are planted berries and small fruits. In the
late afternoon in the hot summers when the road and the
fields are covered with dust, a smoky haze lies over
the great flat basin of land. To look across it is like
looking out across the sea. In the spring when the land
is green the effect is somewhat different. The land
becomes a wide green billiard table on which tiny human
insects toil up and down.

All through his boyhood and young manhood George
Willard had been in the habit of walking on Trunion
Pike. He had been in the midst of the great open place
on winter nights when it was covered with snow and only
the moon looked down at him; he had been there in the
fall when bleak winds blew and on summer evenings when
the air vibrated with the song of insects. On the April
morning he wanted to go there again, to walk again in
the silence. He did walk to where the road dipped down
by a little stream two miles from town and then turned
and walked silently back again. When he got to Main
Street clerks were sweeping the sidewalks before the
stores. "Hey, you George. How does it feel to be going
away?" they asked.

The westbound train leaves Winesburg at seven
forty-five in the morning. Tom Little is conductor. His
train runs from Cleveland to where it connects with a
great trunk line railroad with terminals in Chicago and
New York. Tom has what in railroad circles is called an
"easy run." Every evening he returns to his family. In
the fall and spring he spends his Sundays fishing in
Lake Erie. He has a round red face and small blue eyes.
He knows the people in the towns along his railroad
better than a city man knows the people who live in his
apartment building.

George came down the little incline from the New
Willard House at seven o'clock. Tom Willard carried his
bag. The son had become taller than the father.

On the station platform everyone shook the young man's
hand. More than a dozen people waited about. Then they
talked of their own affairs. Even Will Henderson, who
was lazy and often slept until nine, had got out of
bed. George was embarrassed. Gertrude Wilmot, a tall
thin woman of fifty who worked in the Winesburg post
office, came along the station platform. She had never
before paid any attention to George. Now she stopped
and put out her hand. In two words she voiced what
everyone felt. "Good luck," she said sharply and then
turning went on her way.

When the train came into the station George felt
relieved. He scampered hurriedly aboard. Helen White
came running along Main Street hoping to have a parting
word with him, but he had found a seat and did not see
her. When the train started Tom Little punched his
ticket, grinned and, although he knew George well and
knew on what adventure he was just setting out, made no
comment. Tom had seen a thousand George Willards go out
of their towns to the city. It was a commonplace enough
incident with him. In the smoking car there was a man
who had just invited Tom to go on a fishing trip to
Sandusky Bay. He wanted to accept the invitation and
talk over details.

George glanced up and down the car to be sure no one
was looking, then took out his pocket-book and counted
his money. His mind was occupied with a desire not to
appear green. Almost the last words his father had said
to him concerned the matter of his behavior when he got
to the city. "Be a sharp one," Tom Willard had said.
"Keep your eyes on your money. Be awake. That's the
ticket. Don't let anyone think you're a greenhorn."

After George counted his money he looked out of the
window and was surprised to see that the train was
still in Winesburg.

The young man, going out of his town to meet the
adventure of life, began to think but he did not think
of anything very big or dramatic. Things like his
mother's death, his departure from Winesburg, the
uncertainty of his future life in the city, the serious
and larger aspects of his life did not come into his
mind.

He thought of little things--Turk Smollet wheeling
boards through the main street of his town in the
morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once
stayed overnight at his father's hotel, Butch Wheeler
the lamp lighter of Winesburg hurrying through the
streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his
hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg
post office and putting a stamp on an envelope.

The young man's mind was carried away by his growing
passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have
thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection
of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes
and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for
a long time and when he aroused himself and again
looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had
disappeared and his life there had become but a
background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.