Kol Anderson The Prisoner Series Epub
Julia Heaslet
Several years later, as I was about to go overseas as a soldier, I spent mylast week-end pass on a somewhat quixotic journey to Clyde, Ohio, the town uponwhich Winesburg was partly modeled. Clyde looked, I suppose, not very differentfrom most other American towns, and the few of its residents I tried to engagein talk about Anderson seemed quite uninterested. This indifference would nothave surprised him; it certainly should not surprise anyone who reads his book.
The writer, an old man with a white mustache, had some difficulty in gettinginto bed. The windows of the house in which he lived were high and he wanted tolook at the trees when he awoke in the morning. A carpenter came to fix the bedso that it would be on a level with the window.
For a time the two men talked of the raising of the bed and then they talked ofother things. The soldier got on the subject of the war. The writer, in fact,led him to that subject. The carpenter had once been a prisoner inAndersonville prison and had lost a brother. The brother had died ofstarvation, and whenever the carpenter got upon that subject he cried. He, likethe old writer, had a white mustache, and when he cried he puckered up his lipsand the mustache bobbed up and down. The weeping old man with the cigar in hismouth was ludicrous. The plan the writer had for the raising of his bed wasforgotten and later the carpenter did it in his own way and the writer, who waspast sixty, had to help himself with a chair when he went to bed at night.
The old writer, like all of the people in the world, had got, during his longlife, a great many notions in his head. He had once been quite handsome and anumber of women had been in love with him. And then, of course, he had knownpeople, many people, known them in a peculiarly intimate way that was differentfrom the way in which you and I know people. At least that is what the writerthought and the thought pleased him. Why quarrel with an old man concerning histhoughts?
In the bed the writer had a dream that was not a dream. As he grew somewhatsleepy but was still conscious, figures began to appear before his eyes. Heimagined the young indescribable thing within himself was driving a longprocession of figures before his eyes.
The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful,and one, a woman all drawn out of shape, hurt the old man by her grotesqueness.When she passed he made a noise like a small dog whimpering. Had you come intothe room you might have supposed the old man had unpleasant dreams or perhapsindigestion.
For an hour the procession of grotesques passed before the eyes of the old man,and then, although it was a painful thing to do, he crept out of bed and beganto write. Some one of the grotesques had made a deep impression on his mind andhe wanted to describe it.
That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughtsbut no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was acomposite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were thetruths and they were all beautiful.
The old man had listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try totell you of all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth ofpassion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, ofcarelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they wereall beautiful.
It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite anelaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment oneof the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and triedto live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced becamea falsehood.
In the presence of George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum, who for twenty years hadbeen the town mystery, lost something of his timidity, and his shadowypersonality, submerged in a sea of doubts, came forth to look at the world.With the young reporter at his side, he ventured in the light of day into MainStreet or strode up and down on the rickety front porch of his own house,talking excitedly. The voice that had been low and trembling became shrill andloud. The bent figure straightened. With a kind of wriggle, like a fishreturned to the brook by the fisherman, Biddlebaum the silent began to talk,striving to put into words the ideas that had been accumulated by his mindduring long years of silence.
Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers,forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behindhis back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression.
The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, likeunto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name.Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner.He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quietinexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed,driving sleepy teams on country roads.
When he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum closed his fists and beatwith them upon a table or on the walls of his house. The action made him morecomfortable. If the desire to talk came to him when the two were walking in thefields, he sought out a stump or the top board of a fence and with his handspounding busily talked with renewed ease.
As for George Willard, he had many times wanted to ask about the hands. Attimes an almost overwhelming curiosity had taken hold of him. He felt thatthere must be a reason for their strange activity and their inclination to keephidden away and only a growing respect for Wing Biddlebaum kept him fromblurting out the questions that were often in his mind.
On the grassy bank Wing Biddlebaum had tried again to drive his point home. Hisvoice became soft and reminiscent, and with a sigh of contentment he launchedinto a long rambling talk, speaking as one lost in a dream.
Out of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a picture for George Willard. In thepicture men lived again in a kind of pastoral golden age. Across a green opencountry came clean-limbed young men, some afoot, some mounted upon horses. Incrowds the young men came to gather about the feet of an old man who satbeneath a tree in a tiny garden and who talked to them.
And George Willard was right. Let us look briefly into the story of the hands.Perhaps our talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell the hiddenwonder story of the influence for which the hands were but fluttering pennantsof promise.
In his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a school teacher in a town inPennsylvania. He was not then known as Wing Biddlebaum, but went by the lesseuphonic name of Adolph Myers. As Adolph Myers he was much loved by the boys ofhis school.
Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of youth. He was one of thoserare, little-understood men who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as alovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under their charge such men arenot unlike the finer sort of women in their love of men.
Adolph Myers was driven from the Pennsylvania town in the night. With lanternsin their hands a dozen men came to the door of the house where he lived aloneand commanded that he dress and come forth. It was raining and one of the menhad a rope in his hands. They had intended to hang the school-master, butsomething in his figure, so small, white, and pitiful, touched their hearts andthey let him escape. As he ran away into the darkness they repented of theirweakness and ran after him, swearing and throwing sticks and great balls ofsoft mud at the figure that screamed and ran faster and faster into thedarkness.
He was an old man with a white beard and huge nose and hands. Long before thetime during which we will know him, he was a doctor and drove a jaded whitehorse from house to house through the streets of Winesburg. Later he married agirl who had money. She had been left a large fertile farm when her fatherdied. The girl was quiet, tall, and dark, and to many people she seemed verybeautiful. Everyone in Winesburg wondered why she married the doctor. Within ayear after the marriage she died.
The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. He wasforty-five then and already he had begun the practice of filling his pocketswith the scraps of paper that became hard balls and were thrown away. The habithad been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded white horse and wentslowly along country roads. On the papers were written thoughts, ends ofthoughts, beginnings of thoughts.
One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many of themhe formed a truth that arose gigantic in his mind. The truth clouded the world.It became terrible and then faded away and the little thoughts began again.
The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of land that had comedown to her had set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years she sawsuitors almost every evening. Except two they were all alike. They talked toher of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and intheir eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlikeeach other. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of ajeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her hewas never off the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large ears, saidnothing at all but always managed to get her into the darkness, where he beganto kiss her.
After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it seemed to her that shenever wanted to leave him again. She went into his office one morning andwithout her saying anything he seemed to know what had happened to her.
For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor were together almost everyday. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an illness, but shewas like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples, she couldnot get her mind fixed again upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in thecity apartments. In the fall after the beginning of her acquaintanceship withhim she married Doctor Reefy and in the following spring she died. During thewinter he read to her all of the odds and ends of thoughts he had scribbled onthe bits of paper. After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away inhis pockets to become round hard balls.
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