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 stating 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.
"Queer"