Small Town Notes

Items Which Interested the Editor of a Country Newspaper Who Is Also an Author

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

§1

I HAVE been going up to Johnson s Cove, near Coon Hollow, in Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Range of Virginia, for my vacation for several years. Of course, I have got acquainted with a lot of people up here. I'm a social cuss, I am. I thought I would write to you S. A. and tell you about this.

I have watched the romances up this way. There is a young woman I have been watching. She had a young man who went off to town. He got a job down there, in a big town. He worked on a newspaper down there. He comes up to visit now and then. He has a sister up here.

The sister, whose name is Fannie, is in love with a young man named Jim Blood. They walk out together a lot. She is not much like her brother. She has a kind of natural dignity that he hasn't got.

From the ledge over near the Cove here I can look right down into their place. I see her helping her mother about the house. They have two cows. She milks them nights and mornings.

SO there she is, that young town-fellow's sister, a handsome broad-shouldered woman now. She never goes bare-footed as she used to do the first summer I came up here. I see her with her face against the flank of the cow, milking. Jim Blood has been working in his corn. He's a big tall young fellow. He comes down along the road and stands by the fence. I can't hear what they say to each other from up where I am, but I'll tell you how I feel. I'm not so young any more but I must say that when I see that pair together like that it brings a crowd of memories of youth. I get to thinking of all the happiness I used to expect from life. I was like this young town fellow who comes up here Sundays is now. Well, I was always falling for a new girl, expecting to get into a kind of earthly Heaven with her. Like most men I finally selected one and courted her hard. I got her. Afterwards, lots of times I didn't know whether I wanted her or not and now she don't know either. She is dead now. I'm too old a man to expect to get another, specially such a fine figure of a woman as this Fannie will be, and is now for that matter, but a man will dream.

I think Fannie won't marry this Jim for awhile because Fannie hates to leave her mother with all the farm work to do.

But I was going to speak about the young town fellow, her brother. Before he went to town to work he had a girl up here named Hannah. His own name is Buck. What I wanted to tell you was that Buck and Hannah used to be just as Fannie and Jim are now.

Then Buck went to town. I guess he's making a pretty good reputation as a newspaper man.

Well, before he went to town to work, Buck and Hannah used to walk out together of a summer Sunday evening just as Jim and Buck's sister Fannie do now. Then, as I say, he went to work in town. He used to come home here every Sunday and Sunday evenings you would see him out with his girl. All the young fellows and their girls meet at the church, of course. They go off down the road together in groups. Then the groups break up. On such occasions Buck always ended by going off with Hannah.

He doesn't any more. I think he is embarrassed about it and I am sure Hannah is. She is, in spite of anything she says, still in love with the young fellow.

The point is that he has got town ways and I suppose has been out a good deal with town girls. I don't mean to say he has gone back on his old friends. He is just tired of Hannah, doesn't want her. She maybe isn't foxy enough for him now he has had town experience. Perhaps she doesn't dress well enough, can't afford it even if she knew how.

I was going to tell you about what I saw. It was two weeks ago, a Sunday night and Buck, this young town newspaper reporter, was up here. He went to the preaching with the young farmer Jim Blood. Then the preaching was over and all the young folks came out. They were fooling along the road. I passed them as I was going up toward the Cove, to go to bed.

But it was a fine night and when I got to the little wooden bridge over Coon Creek I went over beside the road and sat down by some bushes.

The whole crowd of young people came along there and stood around awhile. Then they began to break up, each fellow with his own girl, same as I have described. If you have ever been a small town boy* yourself you'll know about this.

THE crowd kept getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon there was just Buck, a young fellow I didn't know, and two girls. One of the girls was the sweetie of that young fellow and the other was Hannah.

So they were about to break up too, when suddenly this young town fellow Buck made some excuse and got out of it. He said he had to go. "Good night," he said. He almost shouted it. He was embarrassed, that was it. Then he hurried off along up the road.

So there was the other young fellow left with his own girl and this Hannah, Buck had thrown off on him. "Come on Hannah," he said, "Jane and I will see you home."

"I don't want you to," she said, as she hurried off alone taking a different way than young Buck had taken.

Then that young fellow and his girl Jane went off, talking about it I guess. I stayed there awhile. Such things are always pretty pathetic to see. As I said in the beginning I don't blame this young Buck at all. A man changes, towns and circumstances change him. He thinks he wants some girl and then suddenly he doesn't want her. He can't say so to her. Others in the crowd they go with don't always understand what has happened and keep getting them in embarrassing positions. Sometimes the young man keeps on caring after the girl quits or it's the other way around, as in this case.

Anyway that night I kept on sitting there in the dark by the bridge, thinking as an older man will. Then Hannah came back that way alone.

You see this young Buck had happened to go off toward her house so she went another way. She must have just gone off down the road a ways and waited in the dark until she knew he was gone. Then she came back alone.

She had gone off proud, with her head up, but she didn't come back so. When she was on the bridge, not ten feet from me,—not knowing I was there—she stopped a moment. There is a little rail on the bridge. She put her head down on it and cried. Poor girl, it was heart-breaking to hear. I never wanted anything in my life as much as I did to go and try to comfort her but that wouldn't have worked.

No one would have comforted her that night but this young Buck and he didn't want to, I guess. He was off her. He had his mind on some town girl. I just thought I would tell you about it. It was as pathetic a thing as I ever saw.

R. S. T.—Johnsons Cove, Va.

§2

WHAT ABOUT THIS?

THE Squire came into the print shop. He sat down. He is a grey and yellow man, a yellow skin with patches of white, as though the yellow skin had been peeled off. There was something very shrewd and kindly in his grey eyes.

He began telling me of some neighbors of his. "My tomato plants are about that high now," he said, indicating the height. "Well I thought I would go and hoe them.

"It was evening, almost dark," he said. "Something happened and I thought I would come and tell you.

"You like queer things, happenings and things among neighbors," he said. "I can tell that reading your paper.

"Well, I was hoeing my tomatoes. There is a queer kind of a house next door to mine. It is a kind of a double house. What I mean is that sometimes five or six families live in there.

"There was a family came there two or three years ago. I don't know whether it was a family or not. It was a young man and a young woman, both pretty fairly dressed. Then there was a young boy. He might have been six.

"He used to talk nights, in the queerest way you ever heard. These young people couldn't have been his father and mother. They weren't old enough. And they couldn't have been brothers and sisters either. How do I know that? It's the way they was to each other, a kind of loving way.

"The boy used to be talking in a loud way. He preached about God. It was queer to hear. He preached in a learned way, like from a book.

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"The young man came out of the house and went down town somewhere. He couldn't stand it I guess.

"Then the young woman beat the boy. It was cruel to hear. She took a strap and beat him. He screamed so you could have heard him for blocks. She kept it up and kept it up. Each time I said to myself, 'I'll go and put a stop to that.' I just got ready to start when she stopped beating him. She was a dark-skinned young woman. 1 like dark-skinned people myself. I don't hold it against her being darkskinned.

"I think maybe the young man and woman were sweethearts maybe. We don't hear much of that here. I mean a man and woman living together, not married. Maybe they do it more where you come from.

"Anyway these people went away and they came back some time ago. I mean the woman and the boy came back. The man didn't show up. She was here for awhile and she beat the boy same as she used to. The place would be all quiet and then the boy would begin talking in a loud voice— always talking about God. Then she would beat him. We neighbors got together. *You go and stop it. No you do it,' we said to each other.

"And then the woman suddenly went off and got married. She married a weak-looking man. I guess you know him. It's Ily Grayson. He was arrested for chicken stealing once and served a term in jail.

"Well she married him last week. She brought him home with her. Last night I was hoeing my tomato plants. I heard that beating and then the screaming but there wasn't any of the preaching this time.

"I'll go and stop it," I thought, getting up my nerve, so I went. I went up onto their porch with my hoe in my hand. She was beating her new husband this time and he was doing the screaming. The boy sat there looking on and seemed to be enjoying himself. He is a chicken thief anyway, that husband, so I didn't do anything. 'It's all right,' I thought, so I came away.

"It's queer. You like queer things so I thought I would come down here and tell you about it."