IN Chicago I had ruined my chances of becoming a successful man of
affairs because I could not take affairs seriously but that had not
bothered me. Often enough, to be sure, I dodged the fact that, after
having started on the scent of some tale I turned aside because I could
not follow the scent and consoled myself by saying that the need of
money had been the cause of my defeat or that the need of leisure had
upset me but it was always a lie.
I was an advertising man in Chicago and sat in a room with some half
a dozen others. We had met to discuss some matter of grave importance
to say a maker of plows or automobile tires. The matter was really of
no importance to me. The man had come to Chicago with three or four
others and we were to discuss methods of increasing his sales. So many
thousands of tires made, so many thousands of plows. There were other
makers of tires, other makers of plows too. Could we be more persuasive
than they, more bold and daring in statement, more foxy and clever
perhaps?
We sat in a room to talk it over and near me sat a large man with
a beard. Someone had told me that he was the treasurer of the plow
company but that had meant little. Now, as he sat there smoking a
cigarette and gazing out at a window I saw, just when his head was
slightly turned, that he had a long scar on his cheek, that he had
grown the beard to conceal the scar. The talk went on but I sat
fascinated. “We must develop the trade in the southwest, that’s what we
must do,” said a voice from some far-distant place. Pictures had begun
to form in my fancy. Beside the voices in the room, other voices were
making themselves heard. Old memories had begun to stir.
There was something, a story within me that had been there a long time
but had never been told and that the scar under the beard had brought
to life. What an unfortunate time for the story to begin asserting
itself at just that moment. Now I was to think of the promotion of the
sale of plows in the newly opened State of Oklahoma and in Texas.
I sat with some six or eight men by a large table in a room and some
man was talking. He had been to Texas and knew things I would later
have to know when I wrote advertisements for the plow company. I tried
to appear attentive. There was a trick I had cultivated for just such
occasions. I leaned a little forward and put my head in my hands, as
though lost in deep thought. Some of the men in the room had heard that
I wrote stories and had therefore concluded that I had a good brain.
Americans have always a kind of tenderness for such cheats as I was
being at the moment. Now they gave me credit for thinking deeply on the
subject of plows, which was what I wanted. One of my employers--he was
president of our company and his name was Barton--tried to cover up my
obvious inattention. Already he had decided I would have to write the
plow company’s advertisements but later he would tell me of all that
had been said in the room. He would take me into his office and scold
me gently, like a mother speaking to a badly behaved child. “Of course
you didn’t hear a blamed word they said but here is the gist of it. I
had to tell that big man with a beard that you were a genius. My God,
what lies do I not tell on your account? When the little man with the
glasses was speaking of agricultural conditions in Texas I was afraid
that at any moment you might begin to whistle or sing.”
Voices inside the room and voices inside myself too. Was something
coming a bit clear at last?
Now my fancy had taken me quite out of the room where the others talked
of plows. One night, years before, when I was a young laborer and was
beating my way westward on a freight train, a brakeman had succeeded
in throwing me off the train in an Indiana town. I had remembered the
place long afterward because of my embarrassment--walking about among
people in my dirty torn clothes and with my dirty hands and face.
However, I had a little money and after I had walked through the town
to a country road I found a creek and bathed. Then I went back to town
to a restaurant and bought food.
It was a Saturday evening and the streets were filled with people.
After it grew dark my torn clothes were not so much in evidence and by
a street light near a church on a side street a girl smiled at me. Half
undecided as to whether or not I had better try to follow and pick up
an acquaintance, I stood for some moments by a tree staring after her.
Then I bethought me that when she had seen me more closely and had
seen the condition of my clothes she would in any event have nothing to
do with me.
As is natural to man, under such circumstances, I told myself I did not
want her anyway and went off down another street.
I came to a bridge and stood for a time looking down into the water
and then went on across the bridge along a road and into a field where
long grass grew. It was a summer night and I was sleepy but after I had
slept, perhaps for several hours, I was awakened by something going on
in the field and within a few feet of me.
The field was small and two houses stood facing it, the one near where
I lay in a fence corner and the other a few hundred yards away. When
I had come into the field lights were lighted in both houses but now
they were both dark and before me--some ten paces away--three men were
struggling silently while near them stood a woman who held her hands
over her face and who sobbed, not loudly but with a kind of low wailing
cry. There was something, dimly seen, something white, lying on the
ground near the woman and suddenly by a kind of flash of intuition
I understood what had happened. The white thing on the ground was a
woman’s garment.
The three men were struggling desperately and even in the dim light it
was evident that two of them were trying to overcome the third. He was
the woman’s lover and lived in the house at the end of the path that
crossed the field and the two others were her brothers. They had gone
into the town for the evening and had come home late and as they were
walking silently across the grass in the field they had stumbled upon
the love-makers and in a flash there was the impulse to kill their
sister’s lover. Perhaps they felt the honor of their house had been
destroyed.
And now one of them had got a knife out of his pocket and had slashed
at the lover, laying his cheek open, and they might have killed the man
as the woman and I watched trembling but at that moment he got away and
ran across the field toward his own house followed by the others.
I was left alone in the field with the woman--we were within a few feet
of each other--and for a long time she did not move. “After all I am
not a man of action. I am a recorder of things, a teller of tales.” It
was somewhat thus I excused myself for not coming to the lover’s aid,
as I lay perfectly still in the fence corner, looking and listening.
The woman continued to sob and now, from across the dark field, there
was a shout. The lover had not succeeded in getting into his own house,
was really but a step ahead of his pursuers, and perhaps did not dare
risk trying to open a door. He ran back across the field, dodging here
and there, and passing near us crossed the bridge into the road that
led to town. The woman in the field began calling, evidently to her two
brothers, but they paid no attention. “John. Fred!” she called between
her sobs. “Stop! Stop!”
And now again all was silent in the field and I could hear the rapid
steps of the three running men in the dusty road in the distance.
Then lights appeared in both the houses facing the field and the woman
went into the house near me, still sobbing bitterly, and presently
there were voices to be heard. Then the woman--now fully clad--came
out and went across the field to the second house and presently came
back with another woman. Their skirts almost brushed my face as they
passed me.
The three sat on the steps of the house on my side of the field, all
crying, and above the sound of their crying I could still hear, far
off, the sound of running feet. The lover had got into the town, which
was but half a mile away, and was evidently dodging through streets.
Was the town aroused? Now and then shouts came from the distance. I had
no watch and did not know how long I had slept in the field.
Now all became silent again and there were just the four people, myself
lying trembling in the grass and the three women on the steps of the
house near me, and all three crying softly. Time passed. What had
happened? What would happen? In fancy I saw the running man caught and
perhaps killed in some dark little side street of an Indiana farming
town into which I had been thrown by the accident that a railroad
brakeman had seen me standing on the bumpers between two cars of his
train and had ordered me off. “Well, get off or give me a dollar,” he
had said, and I had not wanted to give him a dollar. I had only had
three dollars in my pocket. Why should I give one to him? “There will
be other freight trains,” I had said to myself, “and perhaps I shall
see something of interest here in this town.”
Interest indeed! Now I lay in the grass trembling with fear. In fancy
I had become the lover of the younger of the three women sitting on
the steps of the house and my sweetheart’s brothers with open knives
in their hands were pursuing me in a dark street. I felt the knives
slashing my body and knew that what I felt the three women also felt.
Every few minutes the younger of the three cried out. It was as though
a knife had gone into her body. All four of us trembled with fear.
And then, as we waited and shook with dread, there was a stir in the
silence. Feet, not running but walking steadily, were heard on the
bridge that led into the road that passed the field and four men
appeared. Somewhere in the town, in the dark night streets of the town,
the two brothers had caught the lover but it was evident there had been
an explanation. The three had gone together to a doctor, the cut cheek
had been patched, they had got a marriage license and a preacher and
were now coming home for a marriage.
The marriage took place at once, there before me on the steps of the
house, and after the marriage, and after some sort of heavy joke on
the part of the preacher, a joke at which no one laughed, the lover
with his sweetheart, accompanied by the third woman, the one from the
house across the field and who was evidently the lover’s mother, went
off across the field. Presently the field where I lay was all dark and
silent again.
* * * * *
And that had been the scene playing itself out in my fancy as I sat
in the advertising office in Chicago, pretending to listen to the
man who spoke of agricultural conditions in Texas and looking at the
man with the scar on his cheek, the scar that had been partly hidden
from the sight of others by growing the beard. I remembered that the
plow company, now wanting to sell its plows in greater numbers in the
southwest, was located in an Indiana town. How fine it would be if I
could speak to the man of the beard and ask him if by any chance he
was the lover of the field. In fancy I saw all the men in the room
suddenly talking with the greatest intimacy. Experiences in life were
exchanged, everyone laughed. There had been something in the air of
the room. The men who had come to us were from a small city in Indiana
while we all lived in the great city. They were somewhat suspicious of
us while we were compelled to try to allay their suspicions. After the
conference there would be a dinner, perhaps at some club, and afterward
drinks--but there would still be suspicion. I fancied a scene in which
no man suspected another. What tales might then be told! How much we
might find out of each other!
And now in fancy the bearded man and I were walking and talking
together and I was telling him of the scene in the field and of what I
had seen and he had told me of what I had not seen. He told me of how
during the running he had become exhausted and had stopped in a dark
little alleyway behind stores in the town and of how the brothers had
found him there. One of them came toward him threateningly but he began
to talk and an explanation followed. Then they had gone to arouse a
doctor and a small official who gave them the marriage license.
“Do you know,” he said, “neither her mother nor my own knew just what
had happened and didn’t dare ask. Her mother never asked her and my
mother never asked me. We went along later as though nothing had
happened at all except that with all of us, her brothers and myself,
and even our two mothers, there was a kind of formality. They did not
come to our house without being invited and we did not go freely to
their house as we always had done before the brothers saw us together
in the field that night.”
“It was all a little strange and as soon as I could I grew the beard to
hide the scar on my face that I thought embarrassed all the others.
“As for Molly and myself--well, you see it was somewhat strange to
find ourselves suddenly man and wife but she has been a good wife to
me. After the ceremony that night on the porch of the house and after
the preacher went away we all stood for a little time together, saying
nothing, then my mother started for our house across the field and I
took my wife’s arm and followed. When we got to our house I took my
Molly into my bedroom and we sat on the edge of the bed. There was a
window that looked over across the field to the house where she had
always lived and after a while the lights went out over there. My own
mother kept moving about in our house and, although she made no noise,
I knew she was crying. Was she crying because she was glad or sad?
Had Molly and I married in the regular way I suppose there would have
been rejoicing in both houses and I think there is no doubt we would
inevitably have married. Anyway, my mother did things about the house
she had already done once that night, opened the door to let out the
cat that was already out, tried to wind the clock that was already
wound. Then she went off upstairs and our house was dark and silent too.
“We just sat like that, on the edge of the bed, Molly and me, I don’t
know for how long. Then she did something. The doctor in town had sewed
up the wound in my cheek and had covered the place with a soft cloth
held in place by pieces of tape. What she did was to reach up and touch
the end of the wound, timidly, with the tips of her fingers. She did it
several times, and each time a soft little moan came from her lips.
“She did that, as I say six or eight times and then we both lay down on
the bed and took each other’s hands. We didn’t undress. What we did was
to lie there, all night, just as I have described, with our clothes on
and holding fast to each other’s hands.”