FROM HIS SEAT on a box in the rough board shed that
stuck like a burr on the rear of Cowley & Son's store
in Winesburg, Elmer Cowley, the junior member of
the firm, could see through a dirty window into the
printshop of the Winesburg Eagle. Elmer was putting
new shoelaces in his shoes. They did not go in
readily and he had to take the shoes off. With the
shoes in his hand he sat looking at a large hole in
the heel of one of his stockings. Then looking
quickly up he saw George Willard, the only newspaper reporter in Winesburg, standing at the back door
of the Eagle printshop and staring absentmindedly
about. "Well, well, what next!" exclaimed the young
man with the shoes in his hand, jumping to his feet
and creeping away from the window.
A flush crept into Elmer Cowley's face and his
hands began to tremble. In Cowley & Son's store a
Jewish traveling salesman stood by the counter talking to his father. He imagined the reporter could
hear what was being said and the thought made him
furious. With one of the shoes still held in his hand
he stood in a corner of the shed and stamped with
a stockinged foot upon the board floor.
Cowley & Son's store did not face the main street
of Winesburg. The front was on Maumee Street and
beyond it was Voight's wagon shop and a shed for
the sheltering of farmers' horses. Beside the store an
alleyway ran behind the main street stores and all
day drays and delivery wagons, intent on bringing
in and taking out goods, passed up and down. The
store itself was indescribable. Will Henderson once
said of it that it sold everything and nothing. In the
window facing Maumee Street stood a chunk of coal
as large as an apple barrel, to indicate that orders
for coal were taken, and beside the black mass of
the coal stood three combs of honey grown brown
and dirty in their wooden frames.
The honey had stood in the store window for six
months. It was for sale as were also the coat hangers, patent suspender buttons, cans of roof paint,
bottles of rheumatism cure, and a substitute for coffee that companioned the honey in its patient willingness to serve the public.
Ebenezer Cowley, the man who stood in the store
listening to the eager patter of words that fell from
the lips of the traveling man, was tall and lean and
looked unwashed. On his scrawny neck was a large
wen partially covered by a grey beard. He wore a
long Prince Albert coat. The coat had been purchased to serve as a wedding garment. Before he
became a merchant Ebenezer was a farmer and after
his marriage he wore the Prince Albert coat to
church on Sundays and on Saturday afternoons
when he came into town to trade. When he sold
the farm to become a merchant he wore the coat
constantly. It had become brown with age and was
covered with grease spots, but in it Ebenezer always
felt dressed up and ready for the day in town.
As a merchant Ebenezer was not happily placed
in life and he had not been happily placed as a
farmer. Still he existed. His family, consisting of a
daughter named Mabel and the son, lived with him
in rooms above the store and it did not cost them
much to live. His troubles were not financial. His
unhappiness as a merchant lay in the fact that when
a traveling man with wares to be sold came in at
the front door he was afraid. Behind the counter
he stood shaking his head. He was afraid, first that
he would stubbornly refuse to buy and thus lose the
opportunity to sell again; second that he would not
be stubborn enough and would in a moment of
weakness buy what could not be sold.
In the store on the morning when Elmer Cowley
saw George Willard standing and apparently listening at the back door of the Eagle printshop, a
situation had arisen that always stirred the son's
wrath. The traveling man talked and Ebenezer listened, his whole figure expressing uncertainty. "You
see how quickly it is done," said the traveling man,
who had for sale a small flat metal substitute for
collar buttons. With one hand he quickly unfastened
a collar from his shirt and then fastened it on again.
He assumed a flattering wheedling tone. "I tell you
what, men have come to the end of all this fooling
with collar buttons and you are the man to make
money out of the change that is coming. I am offering you the exclusive agency for this town. Take
twenty dozen of these fasteners and I'll not visit any
other store. I'll leave the field to you."
The traveling man leaned over the counter and
tapped with his finger on Ebenezer's breast. "It's an
opportunity and I want you to take it," he urged.
"A friend of mine told me about you. 'See that man
Cowley,' he said. 'He's a live one.'"
The traveling man paused and waited. Taking a
book from his pocket he began writing out the
order. Still holding the shoe in his hand Elmer Cowley went through the store, past the two absorbed
men, to a glass showcase near the front door. He
took a cheap revolver from the case and began to
wave it about. "You get out of here!" he shrieked.
"We don't want any collar fasteners here." An idea
came to him. "Mind, I'm not making any threat,"
he added. "I don't say I'll shoot. Maybe I just took
this gun out of the case to look at it. But you better
get out. Yes sir, I'll say that. You better grab up
your things and get out."
The young storekeeper's voice rose to a scream
and going behind the counter he began to advance
upon the two men. "We're through being fools
here!" he cried. "We ain't going to buy any more
stuff until we begin to sell. We ain't going to keep
on being queer and have folks staring and listening.
You get out of here!"
The traveling man left. Raking the samples of collar fasteners off the counter into a black leather bag,
he ran. He was a small man and very bow-legged
and he ran awkwardly. The black bag caught against
the door and he stumbled and fell. "Crazy, that's
what he is--crazy!" he sputtered as he arose from
the sidewalk and hurried away.
In the store Elmer Cowley and his father stared at
each other. Now that the immediate object of his
wrath had fled, the younger man was embarrassed.
"Well, I meant it. I think we've been queer long
enough," he declared, going to the showcase and
replacing the revolver. Sitting on a barrel he pulled
on and fastened the shoe he had been holding in
his hand. He was waiting for some word of understanding from his father but when Ebenezer spoke
his words only served to reawaken the wrath in the
son and the young man ran out of the store without
replying. Scratching his grey beard with his long
dirty fingers, the merchant looked at his son with
the same wavering uncertain stare with which he
had confronted the traveling man. "I'll be starched,"
he said softly. "Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed
and starched!"
Elmer Cowley went out of Winesburg and along
a country road that paralleled the railroad track. He
did not know where he was going or what he was
going to do. In the shelter of a deep cut where the
road, after turning sharply to the right, dipped
under the tracks he stopped and the passion that
had been the cause of his outburst in the store began
to again find expression. "I will not be queer--one
to be looked at and listened to," he declared aloud.
"I'll be like other people. I'll show that George Willard. He'll find out. I'll show him!"
The distraught young man stood in the middle of
the road and glared back at the town. He did not
know the reporter George Willard and had no special feeling concerning the tall boy who ran about
town gathering the town news. The reporter had
merely come, by his presence in the office and in
the printshop of the Winesburg Eagle, to stand for
something in the young merchant's mind. He thought
the boy who passed and repassed Cowley & Son's
store and who stopped to talk to people in the street
must be thinking of him and perhaps laughing at
him. George Willard, he felt, belonged to the town,
typified the town, represented in his person the
spirit of the town. Elmer Cowley could not have
believed that George Willard had also his days of
unhappiness, that vague hungers and secret unnamable desires visited also his mind. Did he not represent public opinion and had not the public opinion
of Winesburg condemned the Cowleys to queerness?
Did he not walk whistling and laughing through
Main Street? Might not one by striking his person
strike also the greater enemy--the thing that
smiled and went its own way--the judgment of
Winesburg?
Elmer Cowley was extraordinarily tall and his
arms were long and powerful. His hair, his eyebrows, and the downy beard that had begun to
grow upon his chin, were pale almost to whiteness.
His teeth protruded from between his lips and his
eyes were blue with the colorless blueness of the
marbles called "aggies" that the boys of Winesburg
carried in their pockets. Elmer had lived in Winesburg for a year and had made no friends. He was,
he felt, one condemned to go through life without
friends and he hated the thought.
Sullenly the tall young man tramped along the
road with his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets.
The day was cold with a raw wind, but presently
the sun began to shine and the road became soft
and muddy. The tops of the ridges of frozen mud
that formed the road began to melt and the mud
clung to Elmer's shoes. His feet became cold. When
he had gone several miles he turned off the road,
crossed a field and entered a wood. In the wood he
gathered sticks to build a fire, by which he sat trying
to warm himself, miserable in body and in mind.
For two hours he sat on the log by the fire and
then, arising and creeping cautiously through a
mass of underbrush, he went to a fence and looked
across fields to a small farmhouse surrounded by
low sheds. A smile came to his lips and he began
making motions with his long arms to a man who
was husking corn in one of the fields.
In his hour of misery the young merchant had
returned to the farm where he had lived through
boyhood and where there was another human being
to whom he felt he could explain himself. The man
on the farm was a half-witted old fellow named
Mook. He had once been employed by Ebenezer
Cowley and had stayed on the farm when it was
sold. The old man lived in one of the unpainted
sheds back of the farmhouse and puttered about all
day in the fields.
Mook the half-wit lived happily. With childlike
faith he believed in the intelligence of the animals
that lived in the sheds with him, and when he was
lonely held long conversations with the cows, the
pigs, and even with the chickens that ran about the
barnyard. He it was who had put the expression
regarding being "laundered" into the mouth of his
former employer. When excited or surprised by anything he smiled vaguely and muttered: "I'll be
washed and ironed. Well, well, I'll be washed and
ironed and starched."
When the half-witted old man left his husking of
corn and came into the wood to meet Elmer Cowley,
he was neither surprised nor especially interested in
the sudden appearance of the young man. His feet
also were cold and he sat on the log by the fire,
grateful for the warmth and apparently indifferent
to what Elmer had to say.
Elmer talked earnestly and with great freedom,
walking up and down and waving his arms about.
"You don't understand what's the matter with me so
of course you don't care," he declared. "With me
it's different. Look how it has always been with me.
Father is queer and mother was queer, too. Even
the clothes mother used to wear were not like other
people's clothes, and look at that coat in which father goes about there in town, thinking he's dressed
up, too. Why don't he get a new one? It wouldn't
cost much. I'll tell you why. Father doesn't know
and when mother was alive she didn't know either.
Mabel is different. She knows but she won't say
anything. I will, though. I'm not going to be stared
at any longer. Why look here, Mook, father doesn't
know that his store there in town is just a queer
jumble, that he'll never sell the stuff he buys. He
knows nothing about it. Sometimes he's a little worried that trade doesn't come and then he goes and
buys something else. In the evenings he sits by the
fire upstairs and says trade will come after a while.
He isn't worried. He's queer. He doesn't know
enough to be worried."
The excited young man became more excited. "He
don't know but I know," he shouted, stopping to
gaze down into the dumb, unresponsive face of the
half-wit. "I know too well. I can't stand it. When
we lived out here it was different. I worked and at
night I went to bed and slept. I wasn't always seeing
people and thinking as I am now. In the evening,
there in town, I go to the post office or to the depot
to see the train come in, and no one says anything
to me. Everyone stands around and laughs and they
talk but they say nothing to me. Then I feel so queer
that I can't talk either. I go away. I don't say anything. I can't."
The fury of the young man became uncontrollable.
"I won't stand it," he yelled, looking up at the bare
branches of the trees. "I'm not made to stand it."
Maddened by the dull face of the man on the log
by the fire, Elmer turned and glared at him as he
had glared back along the road at the town of
Winesburg. "Go on back to work," he screamed.
"What good does it do me to talk to you?" A
thought came to him and his voice dropped. "I'm a
coward too, eh?" he muttered. "Do you know why
I came clear out here afoot? I had to tell someone
and you were the only one I could tell. I hunted out
another queer one, you see. I ran away, that's what I
did. I couldn't stand up to someone like that George
Willard. I had to come to you. I ought to tell him
and I will."
Again his voice arose to a shout and his arms flew
about. "I will tell him. I won't be queer. I don't care
what they think. I won't stand it."
Elmer Cowley ran out of the woods leaving the
half-wit sitting on the log before the fire. Presently
the old man arose and climbing over the fence went
back to his work in the corn. "I'll be washed and
ironed and starched," he declared. "Well, well, I'll
be washed and ironed." Mook was interested. He
went along a lane to a field where two cows stood
nibbling at a straw stack. "Elmer was here," he said
to the cows. "Elmer is crazy. You better get behind
the stack where he don't see you. He'll hurt someone yet, Elmer will."
At eight o'clock that evening Elmer Cowley put
his head in at the front door of the office of the
Winesburg Eagle where George Willard sat writing.
His cap was pulled down over his eyes and a sullen
determined look was on his face. "You come on outside with me," he said, stepping in and closing the
door. He kept his hand on the knob as though prepared to resist anyone else coming in. "You just
come along outside. I want to see you."
George Willard and Elmer Cowley walked through
the main street of Winesburg. The night was cold
and George Willard had on a new overcoat and
looked very spruce and dressed up. He thrust his
hands into the overcoat pockets and looked inquiringly at his companion. He had long been wanting
to make friends with the young merchant and find
out what was in his mind. Now he thought he saw
a chance and was delighted. "I wonder what he's
up to? Perhaps he thinks he has a piece of news for
the paper. It can't be a fire because I haven't heard
the fire bell and there isn't anyone running," he
thought.
In the main street of Winesburg, on the cold November evening, but few citizens appeared and
these hurried along bent on getting to the stove at
the back of some store. The windows of the stores
were frosted and the wind rattled the tin sign that
hung over the entrance to the stairway leading to
Doctor Welling's office. Before Hern's Grocery a basket of apples and a rack filled with new brooms
stood on the sidewalk. Elmer Cowley stopped and
stood facing George Willard. He tried to talk and his
arms began to pump up and down. His face worked
spasmodically. He seemed about to shout. "Oh, you
go on back," he cried. "Don't stay out here with
me. I ain't got anything to tell you. I don't want to
see you at all."
For three hours the distracted young merchant
wandered through the resident streets of Winesburg
blind with anger, brought on by his failure to declare
his determination not to be queer. Bitterly the sense
of defeat settled upon him and he wanted to weep.
After the hours of futile sputtering at nothingness
that had occupied the afternoon and his failure in
the presence of the young reporter, he thought he
could see no hope of a future for himself.
And then a new idea dawned for him. In the darkness that surrounded him he began to see a light.
Going to the now darkened store, where Cowley &
Son had for over a year waited vainly for trade to
come, he crept stealthily in and felt about in a barrel
that stood by the stove at the rear. In the barrel
beneath shavings lay a tin box containing Cowley &
Son's cash. Every evening Ebenezer Cowley put the
box in the barrel when he closed the store and went
upstairs to bed. "They wouldn't never think of a
careless place like that," he told himself, thinking of
robbers.
Elmer took twenty dollars, two ten-dollar bills,
from the little roll containing perhaps four hundred
dollars, the cash left from the sale of the farm. Then
replacing the box beneath the shavings he went quietly out at the front door and walked again in the
streets.
The idea that he thought might put an end to all
of his unhappiness was very simple. "I will get out
of here, run away from home," he told himself. He
knew that a local freight train passed through
Winesburg at midnight and went on to Cleveland,
where it arrived at dawn. He would steal a ride on
the local and when he got to Cleveland would lose
himself in the crowds there. He would get work
in some shop and become friends with the other
workmen and would be indistinguishable. Then he
could talk and laugh. He would no longer be queer
and would make friends. Life would begin to have
warmth and meaning for him as it had for others.
The tall awkward young man, striding through
the streets, laughed at himself because he had been
angry and had been half afraid of George Willard.
He decided he would have his talk with the young
reporter before he left town, that he would tell him
about things, perhaps challenge him, challenge all
of Winesburg through him.
Aglow with new confidence Elmer went to the
office of the New Willard House and pounded on
the door. A sleep-eyed boy slept on a cot in the
office. He received no salary but was fed at the hotel
table and bore with pride the title of "night clerk."
Before the boy Elmer was bold, insistent. "You 'wake
him up," he commanded. "You tell him to come
down by the depot. I got to see him and I'm going
away on the local. Tell him to dress and come on
down. I ain't got much time."
The midnight local had finished its work in Winesburg and the trainsmen were coupling cars, swinging lanterns and preparing to resume their flight
east. George Willard, rubbing his eyes and again
wearing the new overcoat, ran down to the station
platform afire with curiosity. "Well, here I am. What
do you want? You've got something to tell me, eh?"
he said.
Elmer tried to explain. He wet his lips with his
tongue and looked at the train that had begun to
groan and get under way. "Well, you see," he
began, and then lost control of his tongue. "I'll be
washed and ironed. I'll be washed and ironed and
starched," he muttered half incoherently.
Elmer Cowley danced with fury beside the groaning train in the darkness on the station platform.
Lights leaped into the air and bobbed up and down
before his eyes. Taking the two ten-dollar bills from
his pocket he thrust them into George Willard's
hand. "Take them," he cried. "I don't want them.
Give them to father. I stole them." With a snarl of
rage he turned and his long arms began to flay the
air. Like one struggling for release from hands that
held him he struck out, hitting George Willard blow
after blow on the breast, the neck, the mouth. The
young reporter rolled over on the platform half unconscious, stunned by the terrific force of the blows.
Springing aboard the passing train and running over
the tops of cars, Elmer sprang down to a flat car and
lying on his face looked back, trying to see the fallen
man in the darkness. Pride surged up in him. "I
showed him," he cried. "I guess I showed him. I
ain't so queer. I guess I showed him I ain't so
queer."
An Awakening