UPON THE HALF decayed veranda of a small frame
house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the
town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked
nervously up and down. Across a long field that
had been seeded for clover but that had produced
only a dense crop of yellow mustard weeds, he
could see the public highway along which went a
wagon filled with berry pickers returning from the
fields. The berry pickers, youths and maidens,
laughed and shouted boisterously. A boy clad in a
blue shirt leaped from the wagon and attempted to
drag after him one of the maidens, who screamed
and protested shrilly. The feet of the boy in the road
kicked up a cloud of dust that floated across the face
of the departing sun. Over the long field came a
thin girlish voice. "Oh, you Wing Biddlebaum, comb
your hair, it's falling into your eyes," commanded
the voice to the man, who was bald and whose nervous little hands fiddled about the bare white forehead as though arranging a mass of tangled locks.
Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by
a ghostly band of doubts, did not think of himself
as in any way a part of the life of the town where
he had lived for twenty years. Among all the people
of Winesburg but one had come close to him. With
George Willard, son of Tom Willard, the proprietor
of the New Willard House, he had formed something like a friendship. George Willard was the reporter on the Winesburg Eagle and sometimes in the
evenings he walked out along the highway to Wing
Biddlebaum's house. Now as the old man walked
up and down on the veranda, his hands moving
nervously about, he was hoping that George Willard
would come and spend the evening with him. After
the wagon containing the berry pickers had passed,
he went across the field through the tall mustard
weeds and climbing a rail fence peered anxiously
along the road to the town. For a moment he stood
thus, rubbing his hands together and looking up
and down the road, and then, fear overcoming him,
ran back to walk again upon the porch on his own
house.
In the presence of George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum, who for twenty years had been the town
mystery, lost something of his timidity, and his
shadowy personality, submerged in a sea of doubts,
came forth to look at the world. With the young
reporter at his side, he ventured in the light of day
into Main Street or strode up and down on the rickety front porch of his own house, talking excitedly.
The voice that had been low and trembling became
shrill and loud. The bent figure straightened. With
a kind of wriggle, like a fish returned to the brook
by the fisherman, Biddlebaum the silent began to
talk, striving to put into words the ideas that had
been accumulated by his mind during long years of
silence.
Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands.
The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or
behind his back, came forth and became the piston
rods of his machinery of expression.
The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands.
Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the
wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his
name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought
of it. The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to
keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men
who worked beside him in the fields, or passed,
driving sleepy teams on country roads.
When he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum closed his fists and beat with them upon a
table or on the walls of his house. The action made
him more comfortable. If the desire to talk came to
him when the two were walking in the fields, he
sought out a stump or the top board of a fence and
with his hands pounding busily talked with renewed ease.
The story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is worth a
book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap
many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It
is a job for a poet. In Winesburg the hands had
attracted attention merely because of their activity.
With them Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as
a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day.
They became his distinguishing feature, the source
of his fame. Also they made more grotesque an already grotesque and elusive individuality. Winesburg was proud of the hands of Wing Biddlebaum
in the same spirit in which it was proud of Banker
White's new stone house and Wesley Moyer's bay
stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the two-fifteen trot
at the fall races in Cleveland.
As for George Willard, he had many times wanted
to ask about the hands. At times an almost overwhelming curiosity had taken hold of him. He felt
that there must be a reason for their strange activity
and their inclination to keep hidden away and only
a growing respect for Wing Biddlebaum kept him
from blurting out the questions that were often in
his mind.
Once he had been on the point of asking. The two
were walking in the fields on a summer afternoon
and had stopped to sit upon a grassy bank. All afternoon Wing Biddlebaum had talked as one inspired.
By a fence he had stopped and beating like a giant
woodpecker upon the top board had shouted at
George Willard, condemning his tendency to be too
much influenced by the people about him, "You are
destroying yourself," he cried. "You have the inclination to be alone and to dream and you are afraid
of dreams. You want to be like others in town here.
You hear them talk and you try to imitate them."
On the grassy bank Wing Biddlebaum had tried
again to drive his point home. His voice became soft
and reminiscent, and with a sigh of contentment he
launched into a long rambling talk, speaking as one
lost in a dream.
Out of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a picture for George Willard. In the picture men lived
again in a kind of pastoral golden age. Across a
green open country came clean-limbed young men,
some afoot, some mounted upon horses. In crowds
the young men came to gather about the feet of an
old man who sat beneath a tree in a tiny garden and
who talked to them.
Wing Biddlebaum became wholly inspired. For
once he forgot the hands. Slowly they stole forth
and lay upon George Willard's shoulders. Something new and bold came into the voice that talked.
"You must try to forget all you have learned," said
the old man. "You must begin to dream. From this
time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of
the voices."
Pausing in his speech, Wing Biddlebaum looked
long and earnestly at George Willard. His eyes
glowed. Again he raised the hands to caress the boy
and then a look of horror swept over his face.
With a convulsive movement of his body, Wing
Biddlebaum sprang to his feet and thrust his hands
deep into his trousers pockets. Tears came to his
eyes. "I must be getting along home. I can talk no
more with you," he said nervously.
Without looking back, the old man had hurried
down the hillside and across a meadow, leaving
George Willard perplexed and frightened upon the
grassy slope. With a shiver of dread the boy arose
and went along the road toward town. "I'll not ask
him about his hands," he thought, touched by the
memory of the terror he had seen in the man's eyes.
"There's something wrong, but I don't want to
know what it is. His hands have something to do
with his fear of me and of everyone."
And George Willard was right. Let us look briefly
into the story of the hands. Perhaps our talking of
them will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden
wonder story of the influence for which the hands
were but fluttering pennants of promise.
In his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a school
teacher in a town in Pennsylvania. He was not then
known as Wing Biddlebaum, but went by the less
euphonic name of Adolph Myers. As Adolph Myers
he was much loved by the boys of his school.
Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a
teacher of youth. He was one of those rare, little-
understood men who rule by a power so gentle that
it passes as a lovable weakness. In their feeling for
the boys under their charge such men are not unlike
the finer sort of women in their love of men.
And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the
poet there. With the boys of his school, Adolph
Myers had walked in the evening or had sat talking
until dusk upon the schoolhouse steps lost in a kind
of dream. Here and there went his hands, caressing
the shoulders of the boys, playing about the tousled
heads. As he talked his voice became soft and musical. There was a caress in that also. In a way the
voice and the hands, the stroking of the shoulders
and the touching of the hair were a part of the
schoolmaster's effort to carry a dream into the young
minds. By the caress that was in his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those men in whom
the force that creates life is diffused, not centralized.
Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief
went out of the minds of the boys and they began
also to dream.
And then the tragedy. A half-witted boy of the
school became enamored of the young master. In
his bed at night he imagined unspeakable things and
in the morning went forth to tell his dreams as facts.
Strange, hideous accusations fell from his loose-
hung lips. Through the Pennsylvania town went a
shiver. Hidden, shadowy doubts that had been in
men's minds concerning Adolph Myers were galvanized into beliefs.
The tragedy did not linger. Trembling lads were
jerked out of bed and questioned. "He put his arms
about me," said one. "His fingers were always playing in my hair," said another.
One afternoon a man of the town, Henry Bradford, who kept a saloon, came to the schoolhouse
door. Calling Adolph Myers into the school yard he
began to beat him with his fists. As his hard knuckles beat down into the frightened face of the schoolmaster, his wrath became more and more terrible.
Screaming with dismay, the children ran here and
there like disturbed insects. "I'll teach you to put
your hands on my boy, you beast," roared the saloon keeper, who, tired of beating the master, had
begun to kick him about the yard.
Adolph Myers was driven from the Pennsylvania
town in the night. With lanterns in their hands a
dozen men came to the door of the house where he
lived alone and commanded that he dress and come
forth. It was raining and one of the men had a rope
in his hands. They had intended to hang the schoolmaster, but something in his figure, so small, white,
and pitiful, touched their hearts and they let him
escape. As he ran away into the darkness they repented of their weakness and ran after him, swearing and throwing sticks and great balls of soft mud
at the figure that screamed and ran faster and faster
into the darkness.
For twenty years Adolph Myers had lived alone
in Winesburg. He was but forty but looked sixty-
five. The name of Biddlebaum he got from a box of
goods seen at a freight station as he hurried through
an eastern Ohio town. He had an aunt in Winesburg, a black-toothed old woman who raised chickens, and with her he lived until she died. He had
been ill for a year after the experience in Pennsylvania, and after his recovery worked as a day laborer
in the fields, going timidly about and striving to conceal his hands. Although he did not understand
what had happened he felt that the hands must be
to blame. Again and again the fathers of the boys
had talked of the hands. "Keep your hands to yourself," the saloon keeper had roared, dancing, with
fury in the schoolhouse yard.
Upon the veranda of his house by the ravine,
Wing Biddlebaum continued to walk up and down
until the sun had disappeared and the road beyond
the field was lost in the grey shadows. Going into
his house he cut slices of bread and spread honey
upon them. When the rumble of the evening train
that took away the express cars loaded with the
day's harvest of berries had passed and restored the
silence of the summer night, he went again to walk
upon the veranda. In the darkness he could not see
the hands and they became quiet. Although he still
hungered for the presence of the boy, who was the
medium through which he expressed his love of
man, the hunger became again a part of his loneliness and his waiting. Lighting a lamp, Wing Biddlebaum washed the few dishes soiled by his simple
meal and, setting up a folding cot by the screen door
that led to the porch, prepared to undress for the
night. A few stray white bread crumbs lay on the
cleanly washed floor by the table; putting the lamp
upon a low stool he began to pick up the crumbs,
carrying them to his mouth one by one with unbelievable rapidity. In the dense blotch of light beneath
the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest
engaged in some service of his church. The nervous
expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light,
might well have been mistaken for the fingers of the
devotee going swiftly through decade after decade
of his rosary.
The Book of the Grotesque