Windy McPherson's Son. Sherwood Anderson
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of life and hurls himself against the world. A girl from Parkertown who paints flowers upon dishes to be called an artist—ugh! Let me spew forth the thought! Let me cleanse my mouth! A man should have a prayer upon his lips who utters the word artist!”
“Well, we can’t all be artists and the woman can paint flowers upon dishes for all I care,” spoke up Valmore, laughing good naturedly. “We can’t all paint pictures and write books.”
“We do not want to be artists—we do not dare to be,” shouted Telfer, whirling and shaking his cane at Valmore. “You have a misunderstanding of the word.”
He straightened his shoulders and threw out his chest and the boy standing beside the blacksmith threw up his chin, unconsciously imitating the swagger of the man.
“I do not paint pictures; I do not write books; yet am I an artist,” declared Telfer, proudly. “I am an artist practising the most difficult of all arts—the art of living. Here in this western village I stand and fling my challenge to the world. ‘On the lip of not the greatest of you,’ I cry, ‘has life been more sweet.’”
He turned from Valmore to the men upon the stone.
“Make a study of my life,” he commanded. “It will be a revelation to you. With a smile I greet the morning; I swagger in the noontime; and in the evening, like Socrates of old, I gather a little group of you benighted villagers about me and toss wisdom into your teeth, striving to teach you judgment in the use of great words.”
“You talk an almighty lot about yourself, John,” grumbled Freedom Smith, taking his pipe from his mouth.
“The subject is complex, it is varied, it is full of charm,” Telfer answered, laughing.
Taking a fresh supply of tobacco and paper from his pocket, he rolled and lighted a cigarette. His fingers no longer trembled. Flourishing his cane he threw back his head and blew smoke into the air. He thought that in spite of the roar of laughter that had greeted Freedom Smith’s comment, he had vindicated the honour of art and the thought made him happy.
To the newsboy, who had been leaning against the storefront lost in admiration, it seemed that he had caught in Telfer’s talk an echo of the kind of talk that must go on among men in the big outside world. Had not this Telfer travelled far? Had he not lived in New York and Paris? Without understanding the sense of what had been said, Sam felt that it must be something big and conclusive. When from the distance there came the shriek of a locomotive, he stood unmoved, trying to comprehend the meaning of Telfer’s outburst over the lounger’s simple statement.
“There’s the seven forty-five,” cried Telfer, sharply. “Is the war between you and Fatty at an end? Are we going to lose our evening’s diversion? Has Fatty bluffed you out or are you growing rich and lazy like Papa Geiger here?”
Springing from his place beside the blacksmith and grasping the bundle of newspapers, Sam ran down the street, Telfer, Valmore, Freedom Smith and the loungers following more slowly.
When the evening train from Des Moines stopped at Caxton, a blue-coated train news merchant leaped hurriedly to the platform and began looking anxiously about.
“Hurry, Fatty,” rang out Freedom Smith’s huge voice, “Sam’s already half through one car.”
The young man called “Fatty” ran up and down the station platform. “Where is that bundle of Omaha papers, you Irish loafer?” he shouted, shaking his fist at Jerry Donlin who stood upon a truck at the front of the train, up-ending trunks into the baggage car.
Jerry paused with a trunk dangling in mid-air. “In the baggage-room, of course. Hurry, man. Do you want the kid to work the whole train?”
An air of something impending hung over the idlers upon the platform, the train crew, and even the travelling men who began climbing off the train. The engineer thrust his head out of the cab; the conductor, a dignified looking man with a grey moustache, threw back his head and shook with mirth; a young man with a suit-case in his hand and a long pipe in his mouth ran to the door of the baggage-room, calling, “Hurry! Hurry, Fatty! The kid is working the entire train. You won’t be able to sell a paper.”
The fat young man ran from the baggage-room to the platform and shouted again to Jerry Donlin, who was now slowly pushing the empty truck along the platform. From the train came a clear voice calling, “Latest Omaha papers! Have your change ready! Fatty, the train newsboy, has fallen down a well! Have your change ready, gentlemen!”
Jerry Donlin, followed by Fatty, again disappeared from sight. The conductor, waving his hand, jumped upon the steps of the train. The engineer pulled in his head and the train began to move.
The fat young man emerged from the baggage-room, swearing revenge upon the head of Jerry Donlin. “There was no need to put it under a mail sack!” he shouted, shaking his fist. “I’ll be even with you for this.”
Followed by the shouts of the travelling men and the laughter of the idlers upon the platform he climbed upon the moving train and began running from car to car. Off the last car dropped Sam McPherson, a smile upon his lips, the bundle of newspapers gone, his pocket jingling with coins. The evening’s entertainment for the town of Caxton was at an end.
John Telfer, standing by the side of Valmore, waved his cane in the air and began talking.
“Beat him again, by Gad!” he exclaimed. “Bully for Sam! Who says the spirit of the old buccaneers is dead? That boy didn’t understand what I said about art, but he is an artist just the same!”
CHAPTER II
Windy McPherson, the father of the Caxton newsboy, Sam McPherson, had been war touched. The civilian clothes that he wore caused an itching of the skin. He could not forget that he had once been a sergeant in a regiment of infantry and had commanded a company through a battle fought in ditches along a Virginia country road. He chafed under the fact of his present obscure position in life. Had he been able to replace his regimentals with the robes of a judge, the felt hat of a statesman, or even with the night stick of a village marshal life might have retained something of its sweetness, but to have ended by becoming an obscure housepainter in a village that lived by raising corn and by feeding that corn to red steers—ugh!—the thought made him shudder. He looked with envy at the blue coat and the brass buttons of the railroad agent; he tried vainly to get into the Caxton Cornet Band; he got drunk to forget his humiliation and in the end he fell to loud boasting and to the nursing of a belief within himself that in truth not Lincoln nor Grant but he himself had thrown the winning die in the great struggle. In his cups he said as much and the Caxton corn grower, punching his neighbour in the ribs, shook with delight over the statement.
When Sam was a twelve year old, barefooted boy upon the streets a kind of backwash of the wave of glory that had swept over Windy McPherson in the days of ‘61 lapped upon the shores of the Iowa village. That strange manifestation called the A. P. A. movement brought the old soldier to a position of prominence in the community. He founded a local branch of the organisation; he marched at the head of a procession through the streets; he stood on a corner and pointing a trembling forefinger to where the flag on the schoolhouse waved beside the cross of Rome, shouted hoarsely, “See, the cross rears itself above the flag! We shall end by being murdered in our beds!”
But although some of the hard-headed, money-making men of Caxton joined the movement started by the boasting old soldier and although for the moment they vied with him in stealthy creepings through the streets to secret meetings and in mysterious mutterings behind hands the movement subsided as suddenly as it had begun and only left its leader more desolate.
In the little house at the end of the street by the shores of Squirrel Creek, Sam and his sister Kate regarded their father’s warlike pretensions with scorn. “The butter is low, father’s army leg will ache to-night,” they whispered to each other across the kitchen table.
Following her mother’s example, Kate, a tall slender girl of sixteen and already a bread winner with a clerkship in Winney’s drygoods store, remained silent under Windy’s boasting, but Sam, striving to emulate them, did not always succeed. There was now and then a rebellious muttering that should have warned Windy. It had once burst