Chapter II: Introduction: I (1)

Is it, as Henry Adams suggests, a fiction that society educates itself or aims at a conscious purpose? In Europe at all events, as he points out, society has not done so. European society at the present time is old. Its youth was not more conscious than that of the average man whose character is formed by the blows and punches of fate. But in America society is young and at least self-conscious. Comparative peace surrounds it: experience of similarly thinking nations is at its service. With these advantages can it consciously form a new and finer civilization within itself, with new values from the experience of the old European civilization and values, now of doubtful worth? America, intellectually, is of European descent. Her language, her law, are not alien to those of the old world. When, therefore, one asks if her society can educate itself toward a conscious purpose, one must not answer that question with the experiences of Asiatic civilizations in mind.

Since 1914, it has been very clear that a new energy has begun to stir in America. It is as if the mass of the people has begun to realize itself not as a congregation of settlers, farmers and prospectors, but as a nation capable of an ideal somewhat different in spirit from those which, as it can perceive from its newspapers, animate the nations of Europe. In other words, America has begun to realize that she is capable of at any rate desiring an independent ideal worthy of attainment.

It is not in the works of such writers as Emerson, Whitman, Henry Adams, and Edwin Arlington Robinson, nor in the works of the younger writers who seek inspiration outside the sphere of American life, that one finds this realization actively leading American public thought. It is in such, at first sight, unusual forms of philosophical expression as acts of law, social customs, and even newspaper articles. There one hears the voice of the American nation beginning to assert that the old codes which it inherited from Europe have come under its criticism. This criticism, one feels, arises from a definite and conscious comparison of an inherited ideal with one which is being gradually formulated by the whole nation.

In order to follow an ideal of this particular and, one might say, personal kind, it is necessary that the nation which seeks after it should, in the first place, attempt to know itself. One sees that, in every way, America today tries by self-expression to realize her own character. In the East, in the West, particularly in the Middle West, every individual who is not wholly absorbed in making money or in furthering the material welfare of his country attempts at some time during his life to say what he thinks of the world as he sees it. His world is not an old world of traditions. There is no traditional way of expressing his thoughts about it ready to his hand, nor is every man a great literary artist. He has had, therefore, to invent a form of expression that is not too great a tax upon his powers.

Few men or women are capable of sustaining their energies through the length of a novel or of a work of philosophy, and fewer have the gift of poetry. It would seem, therefore, that almost of necessity the American people has adopted the short story as its particular form of art: not the sketch nor the episodic tale, but a fairly long and systematically constructed piece of writing in which primarily it liberates its own feelings, and by which secondarily it tells a tale. The American short story, therefore, has an immense and peculiar interest and value. One feels in it the striving of a nation to express itself, and thereby to come to a knowledge of its own character, in order completely and consciously to follow an ideal which it hopes to set before itself.

But whether through the evolutions of human life it is possible to follow a fixed ideal, whether it is possible for a whole nation consciously to mould its future, whether even it is possible for a people to realize its own character clearly enough to be able to impose a philosophy upon it, only the future can tell. One is inclined to think that it is impossible, but that does not detract from the extraordinary interest which the phenomenon of a nation seeking self-realization arouses.

Whatever the result of America’s conscious attempt at self-education may be, the record of it, in the form at any rate of the short story, whether good or bad, will be of the greatest value to future generations.

II

To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, for the benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary fiction, which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in formulæ, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead. What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh, living current which flows through the best American work, and the psychological and imaginative reality which American writers have conferred upon it.

No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination than we display at present.

The present record covers the period from October, 1924, to September, 1925, inclusive. During this period I have sought to select from the stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a story only attains substantial embodiment when the artist’s power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth. The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis, is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of substance.

But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form by skilful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.

The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first consists of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the yearbook without comment or qualifying asterisk.

The second group consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories may claim to possess either distinction of technique alone, or more frequently, I am glad to say, a persuasive sense of life in them to which a reader responds with some part of his own experience. Stories included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by a single asterisk prefixed to the title.

The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.

Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories which possess, I believe, the even finer distinction of uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern with such sincerity that these stories may fairly claim a position in American literature. If all of these stories by American authors were republished, they would not occupy more space than six or seven novels of average length. My selection of them does not imply the critical belief that they are great stories. A year which produced one great story would be an exceptional one. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I have found the equivalent of six or seven volumes worthy of republication among all the stories published during the period under consideration. These stories are indicated in the yearbook index by three asterisks prefixed to the title, and are listed in the special “Rolls of Honor.” In compiling these lists, I have permitted no personal preference or prejudice to influence my judgment consciously. Several stories which I dislike personally are to be found on the “Rolls of Honor.” The general and particular results of my study will be found explained and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of this volume.

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN.

London.
November 3, 1925.

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1925

NOTE.--The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the arrangement is alphabetical by authors.

THE GIFT[1]

By SANDRA ALEXANDER

(From _The Reviewer_)

The sun came up around the bend of the river. The top of it, huge and misshapen, had just cleared the mass of juniper and swamp myrtle when Annie Sherrod opened the kitchen door and came down the rickety back steps into the yard. She carried in one hand a bucket of clabber for the pigs and in the other a tin pail full to the brim with a stirring of corn meal and sweet milk for the chickens. As she reached the chicken coop the sun shook away the dark myrtle and gave its red reflection to the river. The water tugged and pulled it out of shape as it flowed on by to the sound. The river and the dried mud along its banks shone brightly, but the woman noticed none of this red glory of sunrise. She scattered the meal and emptied the sour milk in the pig trough, and then filled the empty bucket with the dark water and gave it to the chickens to drink.

The sun had now risen so high that the reflection spread like burnished copper on the face of the water, and Annie shaded her eyes as she looked down at the fish trap anchored close to the bank. The fish trap was made of two hoops of seine and two dug-outs. The hoops were balanced upon a greased pole between the dugouts. The faintest puff of wind caused the top hoop to dip down until it was caught by the current and dragged under. As it came up the opposite hoop was pushed down. The hoops dipped and turned endlessly in the river current and sometimes brought up fish. When the hoops reached the top of their circle the fish fell out and down into the dugouts, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left. “Lazy man fishin’” they called the trap on the river.

There were plenty of fish this morning, silver river herrings, and Annie gathered them up and carried them back to the house.

She busied herself with breakfast and when it stood smoking hot on the stove, she went down the hall to a room at the front of the house. “Henry,” she called, outside the closed door, “it’s time to get up--brekfast’s ready.” A voice answered her and she went on to the next room, opened the door and entered.

It was dark in there and the air smelled of stale bedding. Annie propped up a window and pushed open a broken shutter. The sun threw a broad streak of light across a bed in the corner which held a sleeping man. He roused himself, shivered, and threw one protecting arm across his eyes to shut out the sudden glare. “Can’t you let me be?” he said. Annie did not look at him: “Brekfast’s done,” she said and went out.

The table stood under the window in the kitchen. She wiped the oilcloth top with a damp cloth and set it with thick china plates and cups. She “dished up” the smoking food, filled the cups with coffee and put the pot back on the stove. Then she sat down at one end of the table and stared in front of her.

Her brooding face was lifeless in its repose. There was no thought going on back of the woman’s dulled eyes. She sat, heavy and relaxed, a little forward in the chair, and stared straight in front of her. Mechanically she lifted a hand now and then to frighten away the swarms of flies that hovered over the food before her. The sound of a tapping stick and carefully placed feet in the hall roused her. She sagged to her feet and went to the door. A man with a cane in one hand and the other spread out before him stopped beside her. “Annie,” he said inquiringly.

“Here I be,” she said, catching hold of his hand to guide him to the table.

“I smell fish this morning,” the blind man said cheerfully, as he spread his hands to touch the knife and fork at his place.

“Yes, we got fish.” Annie speared one with a fork and took out the backbone. She put milk and sugar in his coffee, cut up a piece of fat pork and put the plate down in front of him. “There you air!” She helped her own plate and sat down again.

They ate in silence.

Down the hall a door slammed. “Will’s late,” the blind man said.

“Yeah--he wuz drunk agin las’ night!”

The blind man made soft clucking noises, his tongue against his closed teeth.

Will came through the kitchen, glancing at the table as he went by on his way to the back porch. There was a sound of water poured in a tin basin. “Ain’t ther’ a towel ’round here some place?” he called. Annie got up, took a towel from the cupboard drawer out to him, and came back to her breakfast. In a little while he came in, sat down between them and helped himself to food.

II

The two men were brothers, Henry and William Sherrod. The blind man was stout, his sandy hair thin on his round head. William was slim in build and the bones of his face prominent. His hair was thick and the color of Henry’s. His eyes were blue and quick with impatience. Henry’s were blue and flat with the vacancy of blindness.

Will leaned forward and took another fish from the heaped plate in front of him.

“Got in purtty late las’ night, didn’t you, Will?” Henry had finished his breakfast, and sat leaning back in his chair, his pale eyes staring in the direction of his brother.

Will did not lift his head from his plate. “Uh-huh,” he said.

“Who’d you see up town?” Henry went on.

“Nobody much. I--” he cleared his mouth of the fish bones--“I went to the movin’ picher place.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” There was an eager interest in Henry’s voice. He leaned forward and waited for Will to go on. Then he prompted him: “Ain’t you goin’ to tell us what you saw? Annie here wants to know--don’t you, Annie?”

Annie roused herself from the stupor she had fallen into. “I ain’t pertikler,” she said.

Will suddenly scowled at the blind man. He paid no attention to Annie. “It warn’t so much. Jest one o’ them regler pichers. L’s see--” he ran his hand through his thick hair in the effort to think. “Thar was a woman an’ two men--an’--an’ she liked purtty things an’--an’ all. An’ one man was poor an’ tother was rich--so she runned away with him--an’ then he did something crooked--bet on a horse or sumpin like that--an’ so her husban’ come an’ got her. It was like that!”

Henry sighed when Will had finished. “It must er been a real good picher. Minds me er one I saw onct over to Adamton.”

“Yeah! Everything ’minds you er somethin’ you seen over to Adamton. It’s right bad you cain’t go back over there.” Henry dropped his head at the sound of Will’s voice.

Annie had not looked up from her plate or seemed to listen to Will’s recital, but now she stared straight at him, and under the scorn in her gaze he hesitated. “You lay off’n Henry,” she said.

“What you got to do with it? You better dry up yerself!” But as she still stared at him, his eyes wavered and he returned to his breakfast.

Almost paralyzed by this exchange between husband and wife, not because it was new or the first time he had heard it, but because he so keenly realized his helplessness, Henry’s hands fumbled with his knife and fork. They made outlandish noises against his empty plate.

“Have some more fish, Henry?” Annie lowered her voice as she spoke to him.

“Believe I had a plenty, Annie.”

“Gimme ’nother cup er coffee.” Will held his cup back toward the stove without turning. Annie filled it for him. She had finished her breakfast and she went slowly about the kitchen, testing the water in the iron kettle and scraping the dishes clean. She gathered them into a pile and carried them to a table nearer the stove.

Henry tilted back his chair and lighted a pipe. Will sucked noisily at his second cup of coffee, his arms propped on the table, one hand supporting his head.

“Going to do Four Acre?” Henry asked presently in a voice he meant to be conciliating.

“Yeah.”

“It sure is goin’ to be a hot day.”

“You’re dam’ right!”

“Can’t yer put it off?” Henry went on.

“Naw!” Will got up and stood with his hands on the back of his chair, looking down at him. “You got a purtty sof’ snap sittin’ ’round all day doin’ nothin’.”

“Trade you!” Henry said quickly.

“Like hell, you would!” He gave the chair a sudden push that sent it against the table. “Whar’s them milk buckets?”

Annie pointed to them and he took the two empty pails and went out. There was a little space of silence as Annie poured the greasy dish water out through the open window on the ground, where it ran off in a rainbow streak down the slope of the yard. “Will oughter milk before brekfast,” she said to Henry as she hung the pan on its nail.

“Well, it’s purtty hard on him, doing all the work for bothen us.” Henry shook his head solemnly.

“You can’t help it!” Annie said fiercely. She went through the door carrying a bucket of scraps--more food for the pigs. When she came back she swept the kitchen, took the ashes from the cooling stove and covered the table with a cloth, then she darkened the room and went out. She swept the two bedrooms, beat the knobs out of the shuck mattresses and spread them with yellow sheets, yellow from having been washed in river water. When all this was done she returned to the kitchen, strained and set away the milk Will had left for her on the table. She carried it out to the wire-covered box nailed high up on the porch, to keep away the swarming flies. Then she put on a slat bonnet, took a knife and basket and went out into the garden.

III

The Sherrod house stood on a rise of ground above the river. The spring freshets never reached it, not even the famous one of ’98. The front of the house faced the long red dirt track that led up to the crossroads, and the back of it looked down on the river. The house had never been painted, the clapboards had weathered an even gray, and here and there patches of green moss clung to the roof and the chimney bricks. Henry and William owned it jointly, together with the sixty-acre farm on either side of it.

Henry knew nothing of farming. When he was in his teens he had gone away to work on one of the river steamers. In those days, twenty years ago, steamers ran from across the sound, and up the river as far as Jamesville, the town below the Sherrod place. There were no steamboats on the river now. The railroad had built a long trestle across the sound and put them all out of business. The old _Plymouth_, that Henry had gone out on, was lying, a rotting hulk, at Adamton. The boat’s trip from Adamton across the sound and up the river to Jamesville had required a day. Then she was tied up at the dock until next morning when her captain backed her around and headed her downstream and again across the sound to Adamton. The railroad now hauled the cotton and tobacco, and an occasional crop of peanuts from Jamesville to Adamton in three hours.

Henry had been fat even as a young man. He had a jolly laugh and took life pretty much as he found it. He knew a lot of drummer jokes, collected from travelers on the _Plymouth_. He told them to the old folks and to Will whenever he came to the farm to spend a night. Will listened to them with ill grace and Henry was forced to believe Will jealous of him. He wooed Will with presents bought in the superior stores of Adamton, and if he discovered Will was “courting” a town girl, he stopped going to see her himself. He had a long talk with Will when the old people died. He said if Will wanted him to he would give up his job and come home, but Will said he didn’t need any river man around. So Henry had kept on with the _Plymouth_.

The farm was a lonely place and Will’s fine enthusiasm for farming by himself soon wore itself out. He decided to get married and went “courting” Annie Spruill, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. He drove to her house in a shiny new buggy and a suit of clothes Henry had bought for him over in Adamton. Will had intended painting the house and making many improvements when he brought Annie home, but the spring freshet in the river ruined his corn that year, and afterwards he never seemed to get around to it.

Annie had been a pretty girl when Will married her. In those days she had bright brown eyes and black hair, but the eyes dimmed and ceased to sparkle after a few years on the farm with Will. The work was heavy, and Will, his disposition never good, fretted with his seeming ill-luck, rarely provided her with any of the things women like. He had drunk corn whiskey, and as Annie lost her good looks and became a drab creature who rarely spoke, he drank worse. His unfaithfulness to her was known throughout the county.

Annie’s children died at birth. They were thin infants, old beyond the knowledge of mortals. She had wept noisily for the first and a little less for the second. She was carrying the third when Henry came home to stay. A doctor in Adamton had told him he was losing his eyesight. Will said he had been “kicked out of his job.” Annie was glad to have him. He never lost his temper and he helped her around the house until the blindness was upon him. He was resigned and at first made a joke of his affliction. He sat in his rocking chair, never seeming to care whether he moved again or not. He told Annie all the drummer jokes and made her laugh long and loudly. He learned to knit and he sent away to a mail order house for a fiddle. He taught himself to play “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

Annie’s third child was born. Henry held it in his arms until the tiny overburdened heart ceased beating in thumps. He could not see the age-old little face, nor the coppery spots on its forehead, but he knew something was wrong.

Doctor White in Jamesville told Will that he and Annie must not have any more children, and that he was to come to town for treatment. Will listened to him in sulky silence--and never went.

Farm labor became harder to get. A great many farm hands had gone north, lured by rumors of higher wages. Will rented out part of the farm to a negro tenant. This man had a still down in the hollow and Will bought molasses for him and sold the finished “monkey rum” in Jamesville. It was only a small business, for Will had no money to buy off the county officers and run the still on a large scale, but it was quite big enough to furnish him with all he and his town friends wanted to drink. Three or four times a week he drove into town with a jug under the seat of the buggy and, after he had disposed of it, spent the evening lounging around the drug store and talking to the girls from the tobacco stemmery. He spent his money buying them silk stockings and cheap perfume.

During all this time Henry sat on at the farm, moving only when necessity drove him. He grew stouter. He rarely told a drummer joke; Annie knew them all, so there was no need. His clothes were worn and shiny with grease from the food he spilled upon them. He had put his fiddle away. He told Annie he had heard that people born on the river came home to die on it.

IV

It was twelve o’clock and Will came in from the field. The perspiration streamed down his face and the top of his overalls was wet with it. Annie put dinner on the table. She had cooked a piece of smoked hog jowl and boiled some collards in the liquor, and there was a pudding of yellow corn. At Will’s place stood a pitcher of milk, covered with a cloth to keep the flies out. Will washed his hands and sat down; Henry was already in his accustomed place. A cat came in and curled its sleek sides around the table leg. Will kicked at it and the cat jumped in a great arch through the kitchen door.

“I’m going to kill ’at cat,” he said. No one answered him, no one spoke throughout the meal.

The kitchen was stifling hot. When Will had finished he carried his chair out on the porch. A little breeze was stirring, he propped the chair against the side of the house, sat down and closed his eyes. In a minute more he was fast asleep. Annie washed the dishes and set the kitchen to rights. As she crossed the porch on her way to the house she leaned over and shook him awake: “Ain’t you ever goin’ to work?” she said.

He stretched himself and stood up: “Tain’t none of yore business, ifn’t I don’t!” he told her as he crammed his hat on his head and went down the back steps to the field.

He came in early, long before sunset, and asked for a towel and hot water. He took the bucket Annie gave him to their bedroom and whistled as he washed and put on clean clothes. He joined them at supper in his best suit of clothes and ate his food in a great hurry.

“Goin’ to town again tonight, Will?” Henry asked.

“None er yore business!”

“Well,” Henry said mildly, “you needn’t take a feller’s head off when he asks you a question.”

Will’s eyes were red as he looked up, “Who ast you to put in? You mind your own business--if you don’t, you know what’s good for you! I guess I got a right to go to town when I dam’ please! Who does all the work aroun’ here--you tell me that----”

“I didn’t mean nothin’,” Henry said.

“No, an’ you better not neither!” Will got up from his place. He turned toward Annie, “An’ you needn’t leave no light burnin’ for me!” Annie did not look at him. In a minute or two they heard him drive out of the yard. He would be gone all night and in the morning would appear, sober and sleepy, to spend the whole day lying in a stupor on a pallet at the end of the porch, sleeping away the effects of the raw liquor he had drunk.

Henry tapped his way out to the porch and sat down in a rocking chair. When Annie had put up the supper dishes she came out and joined him. It was cooler out there. The sun had long since gone down and the river had lost its look of parchedness. The water was black as it hurried by to the sound. There were black shadows under the myrtle and willows on the opposite bank, but the trees waved green higher up where the light struck them. The sky back of them was soft with a scattering of white clouds. Night flew close to the water. A crane’s broad wings circled and went on downstream. The frogs began their nightly singing.

Henry’s hands rested on his knees. Annie sat tense and drawn in her chair, her hands on the arms and her head back against the high, broad top of it. They were both rocking. Suddenly Henry’s chair ceased rocking and he turned to Annie.

“You ain’t right well, are you, Annie?”

Annie did not answer him at once and he went on: “Seems to me like you been ailin’ quite a spell. You don’t never say nothin’, but I kin feel you moving ’round slow like. What’s the matter with you?” His slow tones were anxious.

Annie rocked all the harder. “Tain’t nothin’,” she said briefly.

“Well, I’m right glad to hear it. Maybe you need a dost of quinine--that’ll put you right in a jiffy----”

“It’ll be a long time afore I’m right agin!” Annie said passionately.

The full meaning of it sank into Henry’s mind in the long pause that followed. He cleared his throat helplessly, and his voice, as he questioned her, had a quaver in it: “You don’t mean you’re goin’ to--to have another young ’un?”

“Yes, I do, an’ I wish I was dead! I been thinkin’ I’d better go down and jump in that river----”

“Now, Annie, don’t talk like that!” Henry put out a hand and felt for her in the dark. “That kind of talk ain’t right. You know what the Bible says about takin’ your own life. It ain’t right. You ought not to even think it----” he lapsed into silence.

“Maybe you made a mistake--maybe it ain’t so,” he said after a little.

“Yes, maybe!” Annie’s voice was bitter.

“Does--does Will know?”

“I ain’t told him, but he knows well enough--” she broke off and suddenly stood up. “I--I forgot, I ain’t fed the cat.” She went swiftly into the house. Through the blinds back of him Henry heard her fling herself down on the bed and smother her sobs in the quilts. He rocked violently, his fat, helpless hands around the knobs of the armchair.

“It ain’t right! It ain’t right!” He repeated it to himself over and over.

The stars were out when Annie stole back to her place beside him. The sky was powdery with them. Crickets chirped in the yard and the frogs cried loudly out of the swamp. Annie’s chair began to move. At first it went slowly back and forth and then it struck its gait. Henry’s rocker kept time to it.

“I been sittin’ here thinkin’ while you was gone, Annie. I been thinkin’ somethin’ mighty curious--about us--an’ how things is fixed in this world. It ain’t right, some of it. Now here’s us--Will all time runnin’ after them girls in town--an’ drinkin’. An’ then there’s you--you has to work too hard. Will don’t work hardly enough--he reely ain’t able too--maybe if’n he was to stop drinkin’ he might----”

“He won’t!” Annie interrupted.

“No, I don’t guess he will. It’s a pity. I seen a lot of it up an’ down the river in the old days--it don’t never lead to no good end. If you was to have somebody to help do the cookin’--an’ was to go to meetin’ now and then--an’ git some pretty clothes----”

“Huh!” Annie’s rocker stopped. “Where you think we goin’ to get all them things? I ain’t been to meetin’ in months--that’s how I git to meetin’!”

“I wasn’t sayin’ you was goin’ to git ’em. I was just thinkin’,” Henry’s voice rebuked her.

“Huh!” The rocking chair took up its accustomed gait again.

“Maybe--maybe when yore time come--” Henry’s voice went on out of the darkness, “maybe yore baby would live--and you could raise it up to be a comfort to you.”

Annie said nothing.

“Then ther’s me. All my life long I took good care of myself. I never had nothin’ much to do with girls--never drunk much--a toddy now an’ then, that’s all--but look at me?” There was no bitterness in Henry’s voice. “But here I am--a big lump--good for nothin’--I jest sit aroun’ an’ make a lot of work for you.”

“You’re a sight o’ company, Henry,” Annie interrupted.

“Well, thank you, Annie, but I’ll never be good for nothin’ again. An’ what I got to look forward to--just tell me that? Tain’t like I got married an’ had some children--it wouldn’t matter so much then--I wouldn’t keer--I’d be more resigned like----”

Annie stopped rocking.

Henry went on. “I sometimes sits an’ thinks about it for a good spell. We don’t know if what the preacher says is true. We ain’t certain ’bout that kingdom up in the sky--leastways I ain’t----” Henry paused uncertainly. “It may be agin’ the Scripters, but sometimes I think all we got is right here on the earth--an’ it don’t seem right that some of us gits so little.”

Annie sat still under the weight of it. “No, it don’t, Henry,” she said at last.

“I lived pretty good. I didn’t miss much when I was on the river--but I wish I’d got married. I wish I’d got a boy or girl to take keer of me now.” He heaved a deep sigh. “Well, it’s like that--but don’t guess it does any good to talk about it much.”

“I never knowed you cared nothin’ ’bout children,” Annie’s voice held a wondering interest.

“No, I don’t reckon you did. I ain’t never talked about it to nobody before.”

There was a long pause broken only by the creak of the boards under the two swaying chairs.

“Henry,” Annie began again, and her voice was solemn “if ’n I was to take keer of myself--same as Doctor White tole me last time--drink a lot of milk and let some of the heavy work go--do you ’spose this baby what’s comin’ would live?”

“Maybe it would, Annie----”

She leaned forward and touched him on the arm. “An’ if ’n it does live, Henry,” she said in sudden excitement, “it’s goin’ to _be yore chile_----”

Henry stopped rocking. “What you mean, Annie?”

“I mean I’m goin’ to give it to you--to grow up an’ be a comfort to you. It’s going to be named Henry Sherrod--an’ you is goin’ to raise it----”

“But how can you do that, Annie--you can’t give Will’s child away?”

“Can’t I?” the same scornful laugh was in Annie’s voice. “Will hadn’t ought to have no children--the doctor done said so--an’ anyway he shan’t tech it----”

“But what’ll he say?”

“He won’t say noth’n--you leave that to me!”

“But look here, Annie,” Henry leaned toward her in the darkness, his voice betraying his earnestness, “supposen you did--people would think it kinder queer----”

“Let ’em! Nobody never comes down here no more. When he gits big we’ll go away----”

“Where’ll we go?”

“I dunno--some place!” Annie leaned back, relaxed. Her voice was full of ease and happiness. “We’ll go away all right. Some place where there’s movin’ pichers an’ ’lectric lights. He kin go to school--pay school. I ain’t goin’ to sen’ my chile to no free school! Maybe he’ll have a tobacco warehouse when he gits grown----”

“Maybe he’ll be captain of a steamboat----” Henry’s voice took up the chant.

“Yes, an’ we’ll have a parlor an’ a organ----”

“Maybe he’ll read the newspaper to me----” Henry’s voice was wistful.

Once more the rockers rocked in cadence. It was cooler now, a little wind blew from across the river and brought the steady “flop flop” of the fish trap as it dipped down in the current.

Henry loosed himself from the dream first. “It’s gettin’ kinder late,” he said. “I reckon we all better be gettin’ to bed.”

Annie drew a long breath. “Maybe it won’t live,” she said.

“Maybe so,” Henry too seemed to have lost interest. He shuffled across the porch and through the doorway, the tap of his stick preceding him down the hall to his room.

Annie sat on, her hands gripped tightly together in her lap. “Oh, God,” she prayed, “I got to have somethin’--I got to have somethin’--”

V

October was on the river. Swamp maples flaunted a blare of color as far as eye could reach. The slim dagger leaves of the willows, already yellow, fell to eddy in the current before the river swept them away. Pokeberries were as black as ink. Green holly was swelling, turning red for winter. Up in the bare branches of the gum trees mistletoe, in round full bunches, swayed with every passing wind, the milky berries gleaming against gray-green leaves.

Annie Sherrod was jellying. She stood over the kitchen table pouring the crimson juice of wild grapes into tumblers and sealing them with round pieces of white paper dipped in rum and white of egg.

Propped against the door in a split bottom chair, Henry was skimping through the strains of “Pop Goes the Weasel,” on his fiddle. His head was bent low, only the thin, reddish hair brushed carefully across the top was visible to Annie as she looked across at him.

“It sure is gran’ jelly!” she told him.

Henry lowered the fiddle. “I can tell that jest by smellin’,” he said.

Annie wiped her hands on her big checked apron. “I’m goin’ to git you some in a saucer to taste in a minute. I never did see the beat of it for jellyin’. Most times you has to wait ’till it gits cole--or set it in the sun--but this here--” She dug her fingers in the cooling stuff and lifted a mass of it high. It dropped with a soft “slosh,” heard plainly across the room. Annie laughed, “Did you hear it?” she said.

“Sure did!”

“I got nine glasses,” Annie went on. “I aim to pick some more grapes next week an’ do up a even dozen ’fore I stops.”

Henry returned to his fiddling. The kitchen glowed in the afternoon light. The stove shone red through the cracks and the kettle on it poured out its song of steam. There was a red cloth on the eating table and a bunch of goldenrod stuck in a tumbler decorating the center of it. Over all, hung the rich, spicy aroma of the fox grapes.

Annie brought a saucer half full of jelly over to Henry.

“Here, taste it!” She filled a spoon and put it in his hand. She stood over him as he sampled it, her hands akimbo on her hips.

“Um----” Henry smacked his lips noisily. “It sure is good stuff!”

“Tomorro’ is Sattiday. You an’ me is goin’ to hitch up and drive to town right after brekfast and do some tradin’ at Latham’s. I already done washed your other ves’--it was terrible greasy. You got to stop dribblin’ things on yourself, Henry Sherrod. If n’ you don’t----” Annie’s voice was mocking, she threatened him with a flourish of the now empty saucer, “if n’ you don’t I’m goin’ to tie you up in one er my apruns!” She threw back her head and laughed.

“Huh! Huh!” Henry laughed with her.

“You all seem mighty happy in here.” Will stood in the doorway. He carried his gun slung across his shoulder.

The laughter stopped in mid-air. Henry returned to fingering his fiddle. Annie picked up the tray of jelly glasses and carried them out on the back porch, passing Will in the doorway, where he grudgingly made way for her. Coming back she took off her apron and, smoothing her new calico dress down over her full hips, got out the big pasteboard box she used for sewing.

All this time Will stood glowering in the doorway. No one had spoken to him. He seemed uncertain what to do, but as Annie fitted on her thimble and lifted a tiny shirt from the garments in the box, and began to stitch with fine stitches upon it, he turned and banged the door behind him.

“Huh!” Annie laughed, “Will don’t feel right comfortable ’roun’ me no more. He ain’t forgot that piece er my mind I give him----”

“You best not be too hard on him, Annie,” Henry lowered his fiddle.

“If that ain’t jes’ like you, Henry Sherrod! Now you takin’ up for Will!”

“No, I ain’t,” Henry protested.

“It’ll do him good. I notice he’s been stayin’ home pretty regular nights lately.”

“Yes, he has, an’ it’s a good sign----”

“Time’ll tell.”

Annie stitched on in silence. The needle moved methodically in and out. Presently she began to hum under her breath. Then she interrupted herself: “Henry,” she said, “why is it ducks’ eggs don’t bring as much as hens’ eggs, can you tell me that?”

“Seems to me you ought to git more for ’em.”

“Well, you don’t! I got a lot of ’em, too, but they don’t bring much. I believe I’m goin’ to do all my cookin’ with duck eggs and sell every one of them hen eggs----”

“That would be a good thing to do----”

“Tomorro’ I aim to buy a cake of that pink soap to the drug store. It’s real pretty----”

Henry nodded his head at her. He was busy with the fiddle again.

VI

The river was rising. Already the banks were lost by the engulfing water. The fish trap had been hauled high up the slope of the yard out of harm’s way. Myrtle and sassafras drowned, while the topmost branches of the willows, heavy with raindrops, dipped in the ever rising flood. It was a sign of spring.... The river roared through its channel and every day a broader expanse of water covered the swamp bottoms and flowed sullenly outward over the young corn planted in the bottom lands. Wild things sought higher land. The surface of the water bore strange fruit. Here an old log, turning over and over, on its way downstream, and there a young tree, uprooted and swept along, its faint green leaves half submerged in the red flood. A chicken coop rode its strangely dignified way downstream.

Water cut off the Sherrod farm from the highroad. Will had taken the horse and buggy and escaped to town. He gave as his excuse that somebody had to tell Doctor White to come out at the end of the week.

Rain set in again the night Annie’s son was born. It started at supper time. Cold fingers tapped on all the windowpanes. Aunt Julia, the negro midwife, climbed the attic stairs and stuffed rags in all the broken windowpanes. In the intervals when she could draw her breath a little more easily, Annie lay and listened to it. She was afraid. She was horribly afraid the doctor wouldn’t get there in time. She asked continually if they had not heard him drive into the yard. “Jes’ de win’, honey!” the old negro woman would reply, placing her wrinkled brown hand on Annie’s tossed hair. “Yo’ res’ easy, he’ll sho’ be here bimeby.”

Henry sat outside the door and heard her cries. He wrung his soft, helpless hands. Tears ran down and splashed on his clean coat front, the coat Annie had washed for him just a few days before.

The old woman moved about the room, placing basins and folding cloths, she trimmed the lamp and put it close beside the bed where it would be most needed. She tested the water in the big kettle on the hearth, brought in pine logs to feed the ravenous fire, and then eased her rheumatic old body into the low rocker beside Annie.

“Mammy,” Annie reached out and clutched her with straining fingers, “don’t you reckon the doctor will be gittin’ here purtty soon now--Will must er told him how bad I needed him----”

“Yes, honey, he’ll come. Jes’ you res’ easy now. Hole yore breaf when you feels the pains--hole yore breaf and bear down----”

“He ain’t comin’--I know he ain’t!” Annie wailed. “Will ain’t never told him!”

This went on for hours, Annie wailing and begging for the doctor and the old woman comforting her as best she could. Henry alternately dozed and wrung his hands in the cold outside the door. Toward morning Annie suddenly lifted up her voice and called him:

“Yes, Annie. He’s coming--Will sure told him----”

“Henry, you listen to me--I don’t care no more. _I don’t care if he gits here or not_, but I want you to promise me that if ’n’ I dies Will don’t lay hand on this child--you promise?”

“You ain’t goin’ die, Annie----”

“Promise!”

“I--I promise.”

Annie lay down quietly. “I’m goin’ to be all right now--I ain’t goin’ to holler no more----” But even as she spoke the final agony came. “Help!” she cried in a voice that brought Henry to his feet and the old woman scuffling across the room....

VII

The river began to go down the third day after Annie’s son was born. It was a good sign, the old colored woman said, and she said, too, that Annie’s baby was the finest baby in the world. Annie lay and listened to her with a smile. She uncovered the plump little body and saw for herself that it was perfect. She lay smiling as she nursed it at her breast.

This child would live.... She had given it to Henry--God couldn’t let it die like the others....

Will was still in town, and the doctor had not come; there was no need now, Annie and the baby were both doing well. Henry tapped up and down with his stick, a smile always hovering about his soft lips.

“If I just could see him.” He sat with the child in his lap. “If the Lord would just give in once and let me see him, I wouldn’t never ask for nothin’ else.”

Annie raised herself in the bed on one elbow and lay looking at them.

“He’s like you, Henry, mor’n he is like Will.”

“He’s goin’ to be a big man,” Henry said. The child’s curling fingers clung tightly to his thumb. It was night. Aunt Julia nodded in the slat-bottomed rocker before the fireplace....

“I’m goin’ give him pot-licker an’ black-eyed peas--make him grow----” Annie crooned, her fingers poking the baby under the arm. It gurgled and they both laughed. “He called yore name, Henry.” Annie prepared to lie down again in bed.

“I’ll betcher he’s smilin’, ain’t he, Annie?”

“You know he ain’t, he’s too little yit--yessir, his mammy’s goin’ to give this baby pot-licker an’ peas----”

“Hold the lamp here, Aunt Julia,” Henry called. “We got to see what this baby’s doin’.”

The old woman came to herself with a start and rubbed her eyes, “Sho’ is smilin’--it’s de bes’ young un----” She pattered over for the lamp, lifted off the shield of cardboard and brought it close to the bed.

“Look, Annie, ain’t I right?”

Annie raised herself once more. “Hold it closer, Mammy.”

“Gwine burn my chile,” the old woman grumbled as she obeyed.

“No, we ain’t, the idea of such a thing,” Annie half laughed, and then she drew herself quickly higher up in the bed and leaned closer to the baby. “Look, Mammy, what makes him do like that?”

“Do lak whut?”

Annie passed her hand rapidly across the child’s face. “He don’t close his eyes like he ought when I do like that!” There was the beginning of panic in Annie’s voice.

“Bless God Almighty!” The woman put down the lamp and lifted the child from Henry’s lap. It wailed feebly at being so suddenly disturbed.

“What’s the matter with its eyes?” Annie’s voice was shrill with fear. “Tell me! Make her tell--” she appealed to Henry.

Henry struggled to his feet, his knees grown suddenly weak and unresponsive. He clutched at the woman’s shoulder. “What is it? What’s wrong with that baby’s eyes?” he demanded in a choked whisper.

The old colored woman held the child against her breast. She made no effort to avoid Henry’s hand.

“What is it?” Annie cried again.

The woman shook off Henry’s hand and drew herself upright. “Dis chile,” she said with strange dignity, “is bline.”

“Blind!” Annie screamed. “Tain’t so--you’re lying! ’Tain’t so, Henry----”

“No, I ain’t tellin’ no lie. Dis chile is bline----”

As she spoke the child’s thin wails filled the room. She clutched it again to her flat breast, hushing its cries against her.

“No! No! I won’t have it blind----”

“Hush, honey, don’t you carry on so. Yo’ got to git yo’ stren’th back.” She attempted to push Annie down upon the bed.

“I don’t care! I don’t care!” Annie evaded her. She struggled to her knees and sat swaying back and forth, her hands clutching in desperation at the mass of tangled hair that fell about her face.

Henry had fallen back into his chair and now he sat, his fat hands twisting and untwisting about the arms of it, his loose mouth uttering words that died away before they passed his lips. The old woman carried the child across the room. She wrapped it in a piece of blanket and seated herself in the slat-bottomed rocker as before. Slowly she rocked back and forth, patting the little round back with her skinny brown hand. “Hush, chile, go to sleep,” she crooned to it.

Slower and slower went the rocker. Annie’s cries had ceased. Henry’s head had dropped upon his breast ... his hands were still. A log fell apart on the hearth. The old woman did not get up to replace it. The tick of the clock on the mantelpiece was the only sound in the room. They slept.... They slept the peace of exhaustion ... the peace of acceptance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Copyright, 1925, by The Reviewer.
Copyright, 1926, by Sandra Alexander.

THE RETURN[2]

By SHERWOOD ANDERSON

(From _The Century Magazine_)

Eighteen years. Well, he was driving a good car, an expensive roadster, he was well clad, a rather solid fine-looking man, not too heavy. When he had left the Middle-Western town to go live in New York City he was twenty-two, and now, on his way back there, he was forty. He drove toward the town from the east, stopping for lunch at another town ten miles away.

When he went away from Caxton, after his mother died, he used to write letters to friends at home, but after several months the replies began to come with less and less frequency. On the day when he sat eating his lunch at a small hotel in the town ten miles east of Caxton he suddenly thought of the reason, and was ashamed. “Am I going back there on this visit for the same reason I wrote the letters?” he asked himself. For a moment he thought he might not go on. There was still time to turn back.

Outside, in the principal business street of the town, people were walking about. The sun shone warmly. Although he had lived for so many years in New York, he had always kept, buried away in him somewhere, a hankering for his own country. All the day before he had been driving through the eastern Ohio country, crossing many small streams, running down through small valleys, seeing the white farmhouses set back from the road, and the big red barns.

The elders were still in bloom along the fences, boys were swimming in a creek, the wheat had been cut, and now the corn was shoulder-high. Everywhere the drone of bees; in patches of woodland along the road a heavy, mysterious silence.

Now, however, he began thinking of something else. Shame crept over him. “When I first left Caxton, I wrote letters back to my boyhood friends there, but I wrote always of myself. When I had written a letter telling what I was doing in the city, what friends I was making, what my prospects were, I put, at the very end of the letter, perhaps, a little inquiry. ‘I hope you are well. How are things going with you?’ Something of that sort.”