Horses and Men: Tales, long and short, from our American life. Sherwood Anderson
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her. They stopped to speak to her. “Hello, little girl,” they said. For her benefit eyes had been lifted, lips had smiled, kindly words had been spoken, and at such moments it had seemed to her that some tiny sluiceway out of the great stream of human life had been opened to her. The stream flowed on somewhere, in the distance, on the further side of a wall, behind a mountain of iron—just out of sight, out of hearing—but a few drops of the living waters of life had reached her, had bathed her. Understanding of the secret thing that went on within herself was not impossible. It could exist.
In the days after the talk with Lillian the puzzled woman in the yellow house thought much about life. Her mind, naturally a busy active one, could not remain passive and for the time she dared not think much of herself and of her own future. She thought abstractly.
She had done a thing and how natural and yet how strange the doing of it had been. There she was at work in a berry field—it was morning, the sun shone, boys, young girls, and mature women laughed and talked in the rows behind her. Her fingers were very busy but she listened while a woman’s voice talked of canning fruit. “Cherries take so much sugar,” the voice said. A young girl’s voice talked endlessly of some boy and girl affair. There was a tale of a ride into the country on a hay wagon, and an involved recital of “he saids” and “I saids.”
And then the man had come along the rows and had got down on his knees to work beside herself—May Edgley. He was a man out of the town’s life, and had come thus, suddenly, unexpectedly. No one had ever come to her in that way. Oh, people had been kind. They had smiled and nodded, and had gone their own ways.
May had not seen the sly winks Jerome Hadley had bestowed on the other berry pickers and had taken his impulse to come to her as a simple and lovely fact in life. Perhaps he was lonely like herself. For a time the two had worked together in silence and then a bantering conversation began. May had found herself able to carry her end of a conversation, to give and take with the man. She laughed at him because, although his fingers were skilled, he could not fill the berry boxes as fast as herself.
And then, quite suddenly, the tone of the conversation had changed. The man became bold and his boldness had excited May. What words he had said. “I’d like to hold you in my arms. I’d like to have you alone where I could kiss you. I’d like to be alone with you in the woods or somewhere.” The others working, now far away along the rows, young girls and women, too, must also have heard just such words from the lips of men. It was the fact that they had heard such words and responded to them in kind that differentiated them from herself. It was by responding to such words that a woman got herself a lover, got married, connected herself with the stream of life. She heard such words and something within herself stirred, as it was stirring now in herself. Like a flower she opened to receive life. Strange beautiful things happened and her experience became the experience of all life, of trees, of flowers, of grasses and most of all of other women. Something arose within her and then broke. The wall of life was broken down. She became a living thing, receiving life, giving it forth, one with all life.
In the berry field that morning May had gone on working after the words were said. Her fingers automatically picked berries and put them in the boxes slowly, hesitatingly. She turned to the man and laughed. How wonderful that she could control herself so.
Her mind had raced. What a thing her mind was. It was always doing that—racing, running madly, a little out of control. Her fingers moved more slowly. She picked berries and put them in the man’s box, and now and then gave him large fine round berries to eat and was conscious that the others in the field were looking in her direction. They were listening, wondering, and she grew resentful. “What did they want? What did all this have to do with them?”
Her mind took a new turn. “What would it be like to be held in the arms of a man, to have a man’s lips pressed down upon her lips. It was an experience all women, who had lived, had known. It had come to her own mother, to the married women, working with her in the field, to young girls, too, to many much younger than herself.” She imagined arms soft and yet firm, strong arms, holding her closely, and sank into a dim, splendid world of emotion. The stream of life in which she had always wanted to float had picked her up—it carried her along. All life became colorful. The red berries in the boxes—how red they were, the green of the vines, what a living green! The colors merged—they ran together, the stream of life was flowing over them, over her.
What a terrible day that had been for May. Later she could not focus her mind upon it, dared not do so. The actual experience with the man in the forest had been quite brutal—an assault had been made upon her. She had consented—yes—but not to what happened. Why had she gone into the woods with him? Well, she had gone, and by her manner she had invited, urged him to follow, but she had not expected anything really to happen.
It had been her own fault, everything had been her own fault. She had got up from among the berry pickers, angry at them—resentful. They knew too much and not enough and she had hated their knowledge, their smartness. She had got up and walked away from them, looking back, expecting him.
What had she expected? What she had expected could not get itself put into words. She knew nothing of poets and their efforts, of the things they live to try to do, of things men try to paint into canvasses, translate into song. She was an Ohio woman, an Edgley, the daughter of a teamster, the sister of Lillian Edgley who had gone on the turf. May expected to walk into a new world, into life—she expected to bathe herself in the living waters of life. There was to be something warm, close, comforting, secure. Hands were to arise out of darkness and grasp her hands, her hands covered with the stain of red berries and the yellow dust of fields. She was to be held closely in the warm place and then like a flower she was to break open, throw herself, her fragrance into the air.
What had been the matter with her, with her notion of life? May had asked herself that question a thousand times, had asked it until she was weary of asking, could not ask any more. She had known her mother—thought she had known her—if she had not, no Edgley had. Had none of the others cared? Her mother had met a man and had been held in his arms, she had become the mother of sons and daughters, and the sons and daughters had gone their own way, lived brutally. They had gone after what they thought they wanted from life, directly, brutally—like animals. And her mother had stood aside. How long ago she must have died, really. It was then only flesh and blood that went on living, working, making beds, cooking, lying with a husband.
It was plain that was true of her mother—it must have been true. If it were not true why had she not spoken, why had no words come to her lips. Day after day May had worked with her mother. Well, then she was a virgin, young, tender and her mother had not kissed her, had not held her closely. No word had been said. It was not true, as Lillian had said, that her mother had counted on her. It was because of death that she was silent, when Lillian and then Kate went on the turf. The dead did not care! The dead are dead!
May wondered if she herself had passed out of life, if she had died. “It may be,” she thought, “I may never have lived and my thinking I was alive may only have been a trick of mind.”
“I’m smart,” May thought. Lillian had said that, her brothers had said it, the whole town had said it. How she hated her own smartness.
The others had been proud of it, glad of it. The whole town had been proud of her, had hailed her. It was because she was smart, because she thought quicker and faster than others, it was because of that the women schoolteachers had smiled at her, because of that old men spoke to her on the streets.
Once an old man had met her on the sidewalk in front of one of the stores and taking her by the hand had led her inside and had bought her a bag of candy. The man was a merchant in Bidwell and had a daughter who was a teacher in the schools, but May had never seen him before, had heard nothing of him, knew nothing about him. He came up to her out of nothingness, out of the stream of life. He had heard about May, of her quick active mind, that always defeated the other children in the school room, that in every test came out ahead. Her imagination played about his figure.
At that time May went every Sunday morning to the Presbyterian Sunday School, as there was a tradition in the Edgley family that Ma Edgley had once been a Presbyterian. None of the other children had