Windy McPherson's Son. Sherwood Anderson
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at the mind of the boy pleading, insisting, demanding, not that Christ’s simple message that men love one another to the end, that they work together for the common good, be accepted, but that their own complex interpretation of his word be taken to the end that souls be saved.
In the end the boy of Caxton got to the place where he had a dread of the word soul. It seemed to him that the mention of the word in conversation was something shameful and to think of the word or the shadowy something for which the word stood an act of cowardice. In his mind the soul became a thing to be hidden away, covered up, not thought of. One might be allowed to speak of the matter at the moment of death, but for the healthy man or boy to have the thought of his soul in his mind or word of it on his lips—one might better become blatantly profane and go to the devil with a swagger. With delight he imagined himself as dying and with his last breath tossing a round oath into the air of his death chamber.
In the meantime Sam continued to have inexplicable longings and hopes. He kept surprising himself by the changing aspect of his own viewpoint of life. He found himself indulging in the most petty meannesses, and following these with flashes of a kind of loftiness of mind. Looking at a girl passing in the street, he had unbelievably mean thoughts; and the next day, passing the same girl, a line caught from the babbling of John Telfer came to his lips and he went his way muttering, “June’s twice June since she breathed it with me.”
And then into the complex nature of this boy came the sex motive. Already he dreamed of having women in his arms. He looked shyly at the ankles of women crossing the street, and listened eagerly when the crowd about the stove in Wildman’s fell to telling smutty stories. He sank to unbelievable depths of triviality in sordidness, looking shyly into dictionaries for words that appealed to the animal lust in his queerly perverted mind and, when he came across it, lost entirely the beauty of the old Bible tale of Ruth in the suggestion of intimacy between man and woman that it brought to him. And yet Sam McPherson was no evil-minded boy. He had, as a matter of fact, a quality of intellectual honesty that appealed strongly to the clean-minded, simple-hearted old blacksmith Valmore; he had awakened something like love in the hearts of the women school teachers in the Caxton schools, at least one of whom continued to interest herself in him, taking him with her on walks along country roads, and talking to him constantly of the development of his mind; and he was the friend and boon companion of Telfer, the dandy, the reader of poems, the keen lover of life. The boy was struggling to find himself. One night when the sex call kept him awake he got up and dressed, and went and stood in the rain by the creek in Miller’s pasture. The wind swept the rain across the face of the water and a sentence flashed through his mind: “The little feet of the rain run on the water.” There was a quality of almost lyrical beauty in the Iowa boy.
And this boy, who couldn’t get hold of his impulse toward God, whose sex impulses made him at times mean, at times full of beauty, and who had decided that the impulse toward bargaining and money getting was the impulse in him most worth cherishing, now sat beside his mother in church and watched with wide-open eyes the man who took off his coat, who sweated profusely, and who called the town in which he lived a cesspool of vice and its citizens wards of the devil.
The evangelist from talking of the town began talking instead of heaven and hell and his earnestness caught the attention of the listening boy who began seeing pictures.
Into his mind there came a picture of a burning pit of fire in which great flames leaped about the heads of the people who writhed in the pit. “Art Sherman would be there,” thought Sam, materialising the picture he saw; “nothing can save him; he keeps a saloon.”
Filled with pity for the man he saw in the picture of the burning pit, his mind centered on the person of Art Sherman. He liked Art Sherman. More than once he had felt the touch of human kindness in the man. The roaring, blustering saloonkeeper had helped the boy sell and collect for newspapers. “Pay the kid or get out of the place,” the red-faced man roared at drunken men leaning on the bar.
And then, looking into the burning pit, Sam thought of Mike McCarthy, for whom he had at that moment a kind of passion akin to a young girl’s blind devotion to her lover. With a shudder he realised that Mike also would go into the pit, for he had heard Mike laughing at churches and declaring there was no God.
The evangelist ran upon the platform and called to the people demanding that they stand upon their feet. “Stand up for Jesus,” he shouted; “stand up and be counted among the host of the Lord God.”
In the church people began getting to their feet. Jane McPherson stood with the others. Sam did not stand. He crept behind his mother’s dress, hoping to pass through the storm unnoticed. The call to the faithful to stand was a thing to be complied with or resisted as the people might wish; it was something entirely outside of himself. It did not occur to him to count himself among either the lost or the saved.
Again the choir began singing and a businesslike movement began among the people. Men and women went up and down the aisles clasping the hands of people in the pews, talking and praying aloud. “Welcome among us,” they said to certain ones who stood upon their feet. “It gladdens our hearts to see you among us. We are happy at seeing you in the fold among the saved. It is good to confess Jesus.”
Suddenly a voice from the bench back of him struck terror to Sam’s heart. Jim Williams, who worked in Sawyer’s barber shop, was upon his knees and in a loud voice was praying for the soul of Sam McPherson. “Lord, help this erring boy who goes up and down in the company of sinners and publicans,” he shouted.
In a moment the terror of death and the fiery pit that had possessed him passed, and Sam was filled instead with blind, dumb rage. He remembered that this same Jim Williams had treated lightly the honour of his sister at the time of her disappearance, and he wanted to get upon his feet and pour out his wrath on the head of the man, who, he felt, had betrayed him. “They would not have seen me,” he thought; “this is a fine trick Jim Williams has played me. I shall be even with him for this.”
He got to his feet and stood beside his mother. He had no qualms about passing himself off as one of the lambs safely within the fold. His mind was bent upon quieting Jim Williams’ prayers and avoiding the attention of the people.
The minister began calling on the standing people to testify of their salvation. From various parts of the church the people spoke out, some loudly and boldly and with a ring of confidence in their voices, some tremblingly and hesitatingly. One woman wept loudly shouting between the paroxysms of sobbing that seized her, “The weight of my sins is heavy on my soul.” Girls and young men when called on by the minister responded with shamed, hesitating voices asking that a verse of some hymn be sung, or quoting a line of scripture.
At the back of the church the evangelist with one of the deacons and two or three women had gathered about a small, black-haired woman, the wife of a baker to whom Sam delivered papers. They were urging her to rise and get within the fold, and Sam turned and watched her curiously, his sympathy going out to her. With all his heart he hoped that she would continue doggedly shaking her head.
Suddenly the irrepressible Jim Williams broke forth again. A quiver ran over Sam’s body and the blood rose to his cheeks. “Here is another sinner saved,” shouted Jim, pointing to the standing boy. “Count this boy, Sam McPherson, in the fold among the lambs.”
On the platform the brown-bearded minister stood upon a chair and looked over the heads of the people. An ingratiating smile played about his lips. “Let us hear from the young man, Sam McPherson,” he said, raising his hand for silence, and, then, encouragingly, “Sam, what have you to say for the Lord?”
Become the centre for the attention of the people in the church Sam was terror-stricken. The rage against Jim Williams was forgotten in the spasm of fear that seized him. He looked over his shoulder to the door at the back of the church and thought longingly of the quiet street outside. He hesitated, stammered, grew more red and uncertain, and finally burst out: “The Lord,” he said, and then looked about hopelessly, “the Lord maketh me to lie out in green pastures.”
In the seats behind him a titter arose. A young woman sitting among the singers in the choir put her handkerchief to her face and throwing back her head rocked back and forth. A man near the door guffawed loudly and went hurriedly out. All over