IF YOU HAVE lived in cities and have walked in the
park on a summer afternoon, you have perhaps
seen, blinking in a corner of his iron cage, a huge,
grotesque kind of monkey, a creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin below his eyes and a bright purple underbody. This monkey is a true monster. In
the completeness of his ugliness he achieved a kind
of perverted beauty. Children stopping before the
cage are fascinated, men turn away with an air of
disgust, and women linger for a moment, trying perhaps to remember which one of their male acquaintances the thing in some faint way resembles.
Had you been in the earlier years of your life a
citizen of the village of Winesburg, Ohio, there
would have been for you no mystery in regard to
the beast in his cage. "It is like Wash Williams," you
would have said. "As he sits in the corner there, the
beast is exactly like old Wash sitting on the grass in
the station yard on a summer evening after he has
closed his office for the night."
Wash Williams, the telegraph operator of Winesburg, was the ugliest thing in town. His girth was
immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble. He was
dirty. Everything about him was unclean. Even the
whites of his eyes looked soiled.
I go too fast. Not everything about Wash was unclean. He took care of his hands. His fingers were
fat, but there was something sensitive and shapely
in the hand that lay on the table by the instrument
in the telegraph office. In his youth Wash Williams
had been called the best telegraph operator in the
state, and in spite of his degradement to the obscure
office at Winesburg, he was still proud of his ability.
Wash Williams did not associate with the men of
the town in which he lived. "I'll have nothing to do
with them," he said, looking with bleary eyes at the
men who walked along the station platform past the
telegraph office. Up along Main Street he went in
the evening to Ed Griffith's saloon, and after drinking unbelievable quantities of beer staggered off to
his room in the New Willard House and to his bed
for the night.
Wash Williams was a man of courage. A thing
had happened to him that made him hate life, and
he hated it wholeheartedly, with the abandon of a
poet. First of all, he hated women. "Bitches," he
called them. His feeling toward men was somewhat
different. He pitied them. "Does not every man let
his life be managed for him by some bitch or another?" he asked.
In Winesburg no attention was paid to Wash Williams and his hatred of his fellows. Once Mrs.
White, the banker's wife, complained to the telegraph company, saying that the office in Winesburg
was dirty and smelled abominably, but nothing
came of her complaint. Here and there a man respected the operator. Instinctively the man felt in
him a glowing resentment of something he had not
the courage to resent. When Wash walked through
the streets such a one had an instinct to pay him
homage, to raise his hat or to bow before him. The
superintendent who had supervision over the telegraph operators on the railroad that went through
Winesburg felt that way. He had put Wash into the
obscure office at Winesburg to avoid discharging
him, and he meant to keep him there. When he
received the letter of complaint from the banker's
wife, he tore it up and laughed unpleasantly. For
some reason he thought of his own wife as he tore
up the letter.
Wash Williams once had a wife. When he was still
a young man he married a woman at Dayton, Ohio.
The woman was tall and slender and had blue eyes
and yellow hair. Wash was himself a comely youth.
He loved the woman with a love as absorbing as the
hatred he later felt for all women.
In all of Winesburg there was but one person who
knew the story of the thing that had made ugly the
person and the character of Wash Williams. He once
told the story to George Willard and the telling of
the tale came about in this way:
George Willard went one evening to walk with
Belle Carpenter, a trimmer of women's hats who
worked in a millinery shop kept by Mrs. Kate
McHugh. The young man was not in love with the
woman, who, in fact, had a suitor who worked as
bartender in Ed Griffith's saloon, but as they walked
about under the trees they occasionally embraced.
The night and their own thoughts had aroused
something in them. As they were returning to Main
Street they passed the little lawn beside the railroad
station and saw Wash Williams apparently asleep on
the grass beneath a tree. On the next evening the
operator and George Willard walked out together.
Down the railroad they went and sat on a pile of
decaying railroad ties beside the tracks. It was then
that the operator told the young reporter his story
of hate.
Perhaps a dozen times George Willard and the
strange, shapeless man who lived at his father's
hotel had been on the point of talking. The young
man looked at the hideous, leering face staring
about the hotel dining room and was consumed
with curiosity. Something he saw lurking in the staring eyes told him that the man who had nothing to
say to others had nevertheless something to say to
him. On the pile of railroad ties on the summer evening, he waited expectantly. When the operator remained silent and seemed to have changed his mind
about talking, he tried to make conversation. "Were
you ever married, Mr. Williams?" he began. "I suppose you were and your wife is dead, is that it?"
Wash Williams spat forth a succession of vile
oaths. "Yes, she is dead," he agreed. "She is dead
as all women are dead. She is a living-dead thing,
walking in the sight of men and making the earth
foul by her presence." Staring into the boy's eyes,
the man became purple with rage. "Don't have fool
notions in your head," he commanded. "My wife,
she is dead; yes, surely. I tell you, all women are
dead, my mother, your mother, that tall dark
woman who works in the millinery store and with
whom I saw you walking about yesterday--all of
them, they are all dead. I tell you there is something
rotten about them. I was married, sure. My wife was
dead before she married me, she was a foul thing
come out a woman more foul. She was a thing sent
to make life unbearable to me. I was a fool, do you
see, as you are now, and so I married this woman.
I would like to see men a little begin to understand
women. They are sent to prevent men making the
world worth while. It is a trick in Nature. Ugh! They
are creeping, crawling, squirming things, they with
their soft hands and their blue eyes. The sight of a
woman sickens me. Why I don't kill every woman
I see I don't know."
Half frightened and yet fascinated by the light
burning in the eyes of the hideous old man, George
Willard listened, afire with curiosity. Darkness came
on and he leaned forward trying to see the face of
the man who talked. When, in the gathering darkness, he could no longer see the purple, bloated face
and the burning eyes, a curious fancy came to him.
Wash Williams talked in low even tones that made
his words seem the more terrible. In the darkness
the young reporter found himself imagining that he
sat on the railroad ties beside a comely young man
with black hair and black shining eyes. There was
something almost beautiful in the voice of Wash Williams, the hideous, telling his story of hate.
The telegraph operator of Winesburg, sitting in
the darkness on the railroad ties, had become a poet.
Hatred had raised him to that elevation. "It is because
I saw you kissing the lips of that Belle Carpenter
that I tell you my story," he said. "What happened
to me may next happen to you. I want to put you
on your guard. Already you may be having dreams
in your head. I want to destroy them."
Wash Williams began telling the story of his married life with the tall blonde girl with the blue eyes
whom he had met when he was a young operator
at Dayton, Ohio. Here and there his story was
touched with moments of beauty intermingled with
strings of vile curses. The operator had married the
daughter of a dentist who was the youngest of three
sisters. On his marriage day, because of his ability,
he was promoted to a position as dispatcher at an
increased salary and sent to an office at Columbus,
Ohio. There he settled down with his young wife
and began buying a house on the installment plan.
The young telegraph operator was madly in love.
With a kind of religious fervor he had managed to
go through the pitfalls of his youth and to remain
virginal until after his marriage. He made for George
Willard a picture of his life in the house at Columbus, Ohio, with the young wife. "in the garden back
of our house we planted vegetables," he said, "you
know, peas and corn and such things. We went to
Columbus in early March and as soon as the days
became warm I went to work in the garden. With a
spade I turned up the black ground while she ran
about laughing and pretending to be afraid of the
worms I uncovered. Late in April came the planting.
In the little paths among the seed beds she stood
holding a paper bag in her hand. The bag was filled
with seeds. A few at a time she handed me the
seeds that I might thrust them into the warm, soft
ground."
For a moment there was a catch in the voice of
the man talking in the darkness. "I loved her," he
said. "I don't claim not to be a fool. I love her yet.
There in the dusk in the spring evening I crawled
along the black ground to her feet and groveled before her. I kissed her shoes and the ankles above
her shoes. When the hem of her garment touched
my face I trembled. When after two years of that life
I found she had managed to acquire three other lovers who came regularly to our house when I was
away at work, I didn't want to touch them or her.
I just sent her home to her mother and said nothing.
There was nothing to say. I had four hundred dollars in the bank and I gave her that. I didn't ask her
reasons. I didn't say anything. When she had gone
I cried like a silly boy. Pretty soon I had a chance
to sell the house and I sent that money to her."
Wash Williams and George Willard arose from the
pile of railroad ties and walked along the tracks
toward town. The operator finished his tale quickly,
breathlessly.
"Her mother sent for me," he said. "She wrote
me a letter and asked me to come to their house at
Dayton. When I got there it was evening about this
time."
Wash Williams' voice rose to a half scream. "I sat
in the parlor of that house two hours. Her mother
took me in there and left me. Their house was stylish. They were what is called respectable people.
There were plush chairs and a couch in the room. I
was trembling all over. I hated the men I thought
had wronged her. I was sick of living alone and
wanted her back. The longer I waited the more raw
and tender I became. I thought that if she came in
and just touched me with her hand I would perhaps
faint away. I ached to forgive and forget."
Wash Williams stopped and stood staring at George
Willard. The boy's body shook as from a chill. Again
the man's voice became soft and low. "She came
into the room naked," he went on. "Her mother did
that. While I sat there she was taking the girl's
clothes off, perhaps coaxing her to do it. First I
heard voices at the door that led into a little hallway
and then it opened softly. The girl was ashamed and
stood perfectly still staring at the floor. The mother
didn't come into the room. When she had pushed
the girl in through the door she stood in the hallway
waiting, hoping we would--well, you see--
waiting."
George Willard and the telegraph operator came
into the main street of Winesburg. The lights from
the store windows lay bright and shining on the
sidewalks. People moved about laughing and talking. The young reporter felt ill and weak. In imagination, he also became old and shapeless. "I didn't
get the mother killed," said Wash Williams, staring
up and down the street. "I struck her once with a
chair and then the neighbors came in and took it
away. She screamed so loud you see. I won't ever
have a chance to kill her now. She died of a fever a
month after that happened."
Adventure