Ray Pearson and Hal Winters were farm hands employed on a farm three
miles north of Winesburg. On Saturday afternoons they came into town
and wandered about through the streets with other fellows from the
country.
Ray was a quiet, rather nervous man of perhaps fifty with a brown beard
and shoulders rounded by too much and too hard labor. In his nature he
was as unlike Hal Winters as two men can be unlike.
Ray was an altogether serious man and had a little sharp-featured wife
who had also a sharp voice. The two, with half a dozen thin-legged
children, lived in a tumble-down frame house beside a creek at the back
end of the Wills farm where Ray was employed.
Hal Winters, his fellow employee, was a young fellow. He was not of the
Ned Winters family, who were very respectable people in Winesburg, but
was one of the three sons of the old man called Windpeter Winters who
had a sawmill near Unionville, six miles away, and who was looked upon
by everyone in Winesburg as a confirmed old reprobate.
People from the part of Northern Ohio in which Winesburg lies will
remember old Windpeter by his unusual and tragic death. He got drunk
one evening in town and started to drive home to Unionville along the
railroad tracks. Henry Brattenburg, the butcher, who lived out that
way, stopped him at the edge of the town and told him he was sure to
meet the down train but Windpeter slashed at him with his whip and
drove on. When the train struck and killed him and his two horses a
farmer and his wife who were driving home along a nearby road saw the
accident. They said that old Windpeter stood up on the seat of his
wagon, raving and swearing at the onrushing locomotive, and that he
fairly screamed with delight when the team, maddened by his incessant
slashing at them, rushed straight ahead to certain death. Boys like
young George Willard and Seth Richmond will remember the incident quite
vividly because, although everyone in our town said that the old man
would go straight to hell and that the community was better off without
him, they had a secret conviction that he knew what he was doing and
admired his foolish courage. Most boys have seasons of wishing they
could die gloriously instead of just being grocery clerks and going on
with their humdrum lives.
But this is not the story of Windpeter Winters nor yet of his son Hal
who worked on the Wills farm with Ray Pearson. It is Ray’s story. It
will, however, be necessary to talk a little of young Hal so that you
will get into the spirit of it.
Hal was a bad one. Everyone said that. There were three of the Winters
boys in that family, John, Hal, and Edward, all broad-shouldered big
fellows like old Windpeter himself and all fighters and woman-chasers
and generally all-around bad ones.
Hal was the worst of the lot and always up to some devilment. He once
stole a load of boards from his father’s mill and sold them in
Winesburg. With the money he bought himself a suit of cheap, flashy
clothes. Then he got drunk and when his father came raving into town to
find him, they met and fought with their fists on Main Street and were
arrested and put into jail together.
Hal went to work on the Wills farm because there was a country school
teacher out that way who had taken his fancy. He was only twenty-two
then but had already been in two or three of what were spoken of in
Winesburg as “women scrapes.” Everyone who heard of his infatuation for
the school teacher was sure it would turn out badly. “He’ll only get
her into trouble, you’ll see,” was the word that went around.
And so these two men, Ray and Hal, were at work in a field on a day in
the late October. They were husking corn and occasionally something was
said and they laughed. Then came silence. Ray, who was the more
sensitive and always minded things more, had chapped hands and they
hurt. He put them into his coat pockets and looked away across the
fields. He was in a sad, distracted mood and was affected by the beauty
of the country. If you knew the Winesburg country in the fall and how
the low hills are all splashed with yellows and reds you would
understand his feeling. He began to think of the time, long ago when he
was a young fellow living with his father, then a baker in Winesburg,
and how on such days he had wandered away into the woods to gather
nuts, hunt rabbits, or just to loaf about and smoke his pipe. His
marriage had come about through one of his days of wandering. He had
induced a girl who waited on trade in his father’s shop to go with him
and something had happened. He was thinking of that afternoon and how
it had affected his whole life when a spirit of protest awoke in him.
He had forgotten about Hal and muttered words. “Tricked by Gad, that’s
what I was, tricked by life and made a fool of,” he said in a low
voice.
As though understanding his thoughts, Hal Winters spoke up. “Well, has
it been worth while? What about it, eh? What about marriage and all
that?” he asked and then laughed. Hal tried to keep on laughing but he
too was in an earnest mood. He began to talk earnestly. “Has a fellow
got to do it?” he asked. “Has he got to be harnessed up and driven
through life like a horse?”
Hal didn’t wait for an answer but sprang to his feet and began to walk
back and forth between the corn shocks. He was getting more and more
excited. Bending down suddenly he picked up an ear of the yellow corn
and threw it at the fence. “I’ve got Nell Gunther in trouble,” he said.
“I’m telling you, but you keep your mouth shut.”
Ray Pearson arose and stood staring. He was almost a foot shorter than
Hal, and when the younger man came and put his two hands on the older
man’s shoulders they made a picture. There they stood in the big empty
field with the quiet corn shocks standing in rows behind them and the
red and yellow hills in the distance, and from being just two
indifferent workmen they had become all alive to each other. Hal sensed
it and because that was his way he laughed. “Well, old daddy,” he said
awkwardly, “come on, advise me. I’ve got Nell in trouble. Perhaps
you’ve been in the same fix yourself. I know what everyone would say is
the right thing to do, but what do you say? Shall I marry and settle
down? Shall I put myself into the harness to be worn out like an old
horse? You know me, Ray. There can’t anyone break me but I can break
myself. Shall I do it or shall I tell Nell to go to the devil? Come on,
you tell me. Whatever you say, Ray, I’ll do.”
Ray couldn’t answer. He shook Hal’s hands loose and turning walked
straight away toward the barn. He was a sensitive man and there were
tears in his eyes. He knew there was only one thing to say to Hal
Winters, son of old Windpeter Winters, only one thing that all his own
training and all the beliefs of the people he knew would approve, but
for his life he couldn’t say what he knew he should say.
At half-past four that afternoon Ray was puttering about the barnyard
when his wife came up the lane along the creek and called him. After
the talk with Hal he hadn’t returned to the cornfield but worked about
the barn. He had already done the evening chores and had seen Hal,
dressed and ready for a roistering night in town, come out of the
farmhouse and go into the road. Along the path to his own house he
trudged behind his wife, looking at the ground and thinking. He
couldn’t make out what was wrong. Every time he raised his eyes and saw
the beauty of the country in the failing light he wanted to do
something he had never done before, shout or scream or hit his wife
with his fists or something equally unexpected and terrifying. Along
the path he went scratching his head and trying to make it out. He
looked hard at his wife’s back but she seemed all right.
She only wanted him to go into town for groceries and as soon as she
had told him what she wanted began to scold. “You’re always puttering,”
she said. “Now I want you to hustle. There isn’t anything in the house
for supper and you’ve got to get to town and back in a hurry.”
Ray went into his own house and took an overcoat from a hook back of
the door. It was torn about the pockets and the collar was shiny. His
wife went into the bedroom and presently came out with a soiled cloth
in one hand and three silver dollars in the other. Somewhere in the
house a child wept bitterly and a dog that had been sleeping by the
stove arose and yawned. Again the wife scolded. “The children will cry
and cry. Why are you always puttering?” she asked.
Ray went out of the house and climbed the fence into a field. It was
just growing dark and the scene that lay before him was lovely. All the
low hills were washed with color and even the little clusters of bushes
in the corners of the fences were alive with beauty. The whole world
seemed to Ray Pearson to have become alive with something just as he
and Hal had suddenly become alive when they stood in the corn field
staring into each other’s eyes.
The beauty of the country about Winesburg was too much for Ray on that
fall evening. That is all there was to it. He could not stand it. Of a
sudden he forgot all about being a quiet old farm hand and throwing off
the torn overcoat began to run across the field. As he ran he shouted a
protest against his life, against all life, against everything that
makes life ugly. “There was no promise made,” he cried into the empty
spaces that lay about him. “I didn’t promise my Minnie anything and Hal
hasn’t made any promise to Nell. I know he hasn’t. She went into the
woods with him because she wanted to go. What he wanted she wanted. Why
should I pay? Why should Hal pay? Why should anyone pay? I don’t want
Hal to become old and worn out. I’ll tell him. I won’t let it go on.
I’ll catch Hal before he gets to town and I’ll tell him.”
Ray ran clumsily and once he stumbled and fell down. “I must catch Hal
and tell him,” he kept thinking, and although his breath came in gasps
he kept running harder and harder. As he ran he thought of things that
hadn’t come into his mind for years—how at the time he married he had
planned to go west to his uncle in Portland, Oregon—how he hadn’t
wanted to be a farm hand, but had thought when he got out West he would
go to sea and be a sailor or get a job on a ranch and ride a horse into
Western towns, shouting and laughing and waking the people in the
houses with his wild cries. Then as he ran he remembered his children
and in fancy felt their hands clutching at him. All of his thoughts of
himself were involved with the thoughts of Hal and he thought the
children were clutching at the younger man also. “They are the
accidents of life, Hal,” he cried. “They are not mine or yours. I had
nothing to do with them.”
Darkness began to spread over the fields as Ray Pearson ran on and on.
His breath came in little sobs. When he came to the fence at the edge
of the road and confronted Hal Winters, all dressed up and smoking a
pipe as he walked jauntily along, he could not have told what he
thought or what he wanted.
Ray Pearson lost his nerve and this is really the end of the story of
what happened to him. It was almost dark when he got to the fence and
he put his hands on the top bar and stood staring. Hal Winters jumped a
ditch and coming up close to Ray put his hands into his pockets and
laughed. He seemed to have lost his own sense of what had happened in
the corn field and when he put up a strong hand and took hold of the
lapel of Ray’s coat he shook the old man as he might have shaken a dog
that had misbehaved.
“You came to tell me, eh?” he said. “Well, never mind telling me
anything. I’m not a coward and I’ve already made up my mind.” He
laughed again and jumped back across the ditch. “Nell ain’t no fool,”
he said. “She didn’t ask me to marry her. I want to marry her. I want
to settle down and have kids.”
Ray Pearson also laughed. He felt like laughing at himself and all the
world.
As the form of Hal Winters disappeared in the dusk that lay over the
road that led to Winesburg, he turned and walked slowly back across the
fields to where he had left his torn overcoat. As he went some memory
of pleasant evenings spent with the thin-legged children in the
tumble-down house by the creek must have come into his mind, for he
muttered words. “It’s just as well. Whatever I told him would have been
a lie,” he said softly, and then his form also disappeared into the
darkness of the fields.