DOMESTIC AND JUVENILE

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

■ So this was the domestic relations court. This was in a Southern city.

The judge was a small man physically. He smoked cigarettes, as I did. He heard some four or five cases and then adjourned court for ten minutes while we took a drag.

We sat in this court room and smoked. We threw the butts out a window into the street. People wandered aimlessly about in a large outer room. Now it began again.

In the street there was a great noise. Someone raced the engine of a Ford. It made so much noise that I missed one of the stories of domestic difficulties being told by a young woman in a torn raincoat. She was nervous and upset. She was excited.

I did not miss all of it. I missed, let us say, six sentences.

They were precious sentences however. "Damn," I said.

This judge was all right. He was a small nervous man. Most of the people in there seemed nervous. The judge slouched in his chair. His face was prematurely old and wrinkled.

There was something very boyish about the man. He threw a leg up over the arm of a chair. He slid down deep into the chair, almost disappearing. Now and then he looked over at me and smiled, a half-tired boyish smile.

Everyone liked him. People did not take this judge as seriously as they have taken other judges I have known.

■ He had surprisingly little dignity. On his desk were a lot of papers. Warrants or summons, or whatever papers are issued in such cases were piled before him. Once he took the whole pile and threw it into a waste paper basket.

There was a clerk of the court, a woman. She had nice eyes.

There were three or four deputies.

You know what deputies and court attaches are like. They are a special kind of human being. They have heard too much of domestic difficulties. They are unmoved. You can't help wondering about such people. How are their own domestic affairs arranged? In most courts the judge is a very dignified man.

Well, your judge, is an educated man. He has been to school, to college. Every judge has his own style—like a United States Senator.

The court attaches take on something of the style of the judge, but they are not up to it. If he is witty, they try that. You know what a policeman is, trying to be witty.

Or the judge is heavy and learned. That puts the policeman up against it too. He also grows heavy and stern. It results in a kind of heavy stupidity, verging on brutality. Given the least excuse he becomes brutal. It seems to be his only way out.

As for the domestic relations judge, in that court, in a Southern city, he was a lovable man.

That throwing of the court papers into the waste paper basket wasn't a flourish. It was accidental.

Two men and a woman rushed to pick them out, to assort them, put them back in order on his desk. He was very contrite.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think what I was doing," he said.

■ The court room was quite small but there was a big waiting room outside. People were sitting out there, men, women and children.

There were people who have domestic troubles.

They were white and black. As I said, this was in a Southern city.

They sat on benches as at a railroad station.

They were afraid, worried, nervous.

You know how people are when they have been summoned into court.

They were afraid out there but when they were brought into the court room, where the judge sat hearing their stories something happened. They began to smile, they squirmed, they felt a bit silly.

He got them all right. He did something to them.

I had just been reading Mr. Bertrand Russell on marriage and morals. He had given me a picture of a new kind of civilization.

Suppose women really got away from the moral taboos laid on them by men. What would happen then?

The father cutting less and less figure in the lives of children. God knows he cuts little enough figure now.

So the woman becomes everything—in society.

The state becomes the father.

What is to happen to the man? I presume the poor cuss will work. He will be like the worker bee, going out to get honey—or money, bringing it home, keeping it up until he drops.

In these domestic relations courts the father seldom appears. Two women have been quarreling.

Or there are boys who have been stealing.

Cases.

Item.

Five young boys, ranging in age from eight to twelve, tried to break into a movie house, through a rear door. They had no money and wanted to see the show.

Item.

A colored boy of fourteen. He was selling whiskey to the boys of a white school. The superintendent of the white school caught him. He had three half pint bottles of moon in his pocket.

The colored boy was from a colored school. He had been bragging to other colored boys there. "I'm going to be a big bootlegger when I grow up."

Item.

Two white people. They were both dopes. This case was quite hopeless. There was a man who was married. His wife hadn't come to court but his mother-in-law came.

It was a warm day but the man and woman were both white and trembling, as with a chill.

The two women wanted the man to go to work and support them but he said he couldn't. He was right about that. There he sat, white and trembling. No one would give that man a job. What was to be done? The two women had talked themselves into the belief that this judge could make the man work, make him fit to work. The judge whispered to me. "Unfortunately we have no lethal chamber."

■ There were no doubt young medical students who could do something with the three carcasses, the wife, the husband, the mother-in-law—all hopeless dopes. The medical students might find out something, cutting them up.

Item.

A young boy. His father had divorced his mother. Or perhaps she did it. She worked in a store, had a good job.

She was at the head of a department in a big store.

Her son was in high school. He belonged to the football team. The team had gone somewhere to play another high school team.

They changed their clothes in the basement of a high school building.

The boy on trial here wasn't a regular player. He was a substitute.

So he slipped into the school building and went through the other boys' clothes. He got nine dollars and eighty cents, a lot of soiled handkerchiefs, six packages of cigarettes and two watches.

He went away then but they caught him two hours later.

He still had some of the swag.

The judge asked him—"Did you ever do this before?"

"Yes. I never got caught before."

"Do you know why you did it?"

"No."

"It might be a good thing you were caught."

"It might be. Whatever I have to do, if I have to serve a sentence, I might as well be at it."

The judge to me—"At what age did you quit stealing?"

"I don't know that I have quit. I still steal something every now and then."

"So do I. I suppose everyone does."

Item.

A negro man came in. He told his story. He worked hard, he said. He worked all day. And when he came home, he worked too, aiming to please his wife. He was a peace-loving man, and he only aimed to please his wife.

Well, he came home in the evening. His wife was pretty lazy. She sat there in his house, a big broad-shouldered, deep-breasted yaller gal.

So, he worked in a barber shop, shining shoes, and he came home.

That morning early he had got up and had got his wife up. They were going to select the coal for the winter.

He told how he escorted her to the coal yards. He was a regular Chesterfield about it. It was a ceremony. The coal was in big bins. Coal comes in various sizes. So this brown man was very particular about pleasing his wife but just the same, as he testified, she looked at him with infinite contempt in her eyes. Some women are like that.

The picture was, however, nicely etched. In the early morning they were in the coal yard. The brown boy was escorting the yaller gal about, from bin to bin. As he told the story you got, somehow, the picture of him, brown and courtly in the grey light of early morning, escorting the yaller gal from bin to bin.

"Look it over carefully, darling. Git jes' what you want. I only aim to please you, my darling."

So then he went to work. He shined shoes all day.

His wife had stayed in the coal yards for a little while, picking up the best coal, as he had shown her how to do. And then she had taken it home.

Well, he came home in the evening. His wife had gone to bed. She was in bed all day.

"Alone?"

"I don't know judge."

She had gone indolent during the day. There she was, when he came home, the big lazy yaller thing.

They did not have any electric lights in their house. They had but one lamp. There wasn't any supper prepared.

There wasn't even a fire lit in the stove. The coal was on the sidewalk, out in front of the house.

The negro said he was afraid to leave it out there. He wanted the lamp to light his way while he carried the coal he had collected into a shed at the back.

She was putting on her stockings. She also wanted the lamp.

"What did you do then?"

"I argued with her. I used persuasion. I reasoned with her."

"And then?"

"I chastised her, jedge."

"How?"

"Well jedge, I got my two legs around her neck like this. I was sitting in a chair. I jerked her down there.

"I had her head in there, between my legs, like this."

"Yes."

"Then I clamped my legs together like this."

"Yes."

"I'se strong in the legs, jedge."

"Yes."

"So then I took off my belt.

"The back side of her was sticking out jes' nice. I took oft my belt. I lammed her good, jedge."

"Pretty good technique, I call it."

"What's that, j-edge?"

The next was a curious case. There was a young man who might have been a poet—he might have been twenty-four—who was already a habitual drunkard.

His mother had sworn out the warrant for him. When he got drunk he grew rather violent. He had come home on the night before and had made his mother's house hideous with curses.

A curious argument had started between him and the judge.

"But can't you quit drinking?"

"I don't know, perhaps I could, judge. I don't know."

The young man twisted his lips in a queer nervous way as he talked.

"Why don't you?"

Silence.

"Well?"

Silence.

"It's pretty rough. Your mother having to come in here and have you arrested."

"She didn't do it."

"What?"

"I say. she never did it."

"Yes she did. Her name is signed here."

Turning to the woman. She was small and fat. There was a puzzled look in her eyes.

"There she is. There's your mother She had you arrested."

"No, she never did."

"But I say she did."

"She didn't."

"She signed that. She came here and complained. She is sitting there now."

"But she never had me arrested."

"Something in her told her to do it. She came here. She lodged a complaint. She had you brought in here."

"She is a good woman, judge, but she is muddle-headed. Now you see what a mess she has got us in.

"Just the same she never did it. Not her. I know her. She never did it. She isn't that sort."

"He is always like that, judge. I can't make him out. He is my boy but I don't understand him.

"He puzzles me, he worries me. I can't sleep at night thinking about him.

"I've never been able to make him out.

"He gets drunk. He raises the devil. He swears terribly."

"What does he swear about?"

"About life, judge. He just swears about life."

The judge:

"Well, my boy, I'll tell you what I'm going to do—can you quit drinking?"

"I can I suppose. A man has what is called 'a will'. He can use that I suppose?"

"I'm going to give you three months.

"If you go straight, O. K.—otherwise the workhouse for you.

"I don't mean for taking a drink. I mean for getting drunk, coming home, raising hell there, swearing like that.

"Where is your old man?"

"He's dead now."

"Are you the only child?"

"Yes."

"Well there it is—if you don't do it the workhouse for you.

"Do you think it's fair? Do you think I am being fair with you?"

"I think it's fair for you."

"What do you mean?"

"I think it's fair for you, being judge. It lets you out."

"I think it's nice, your sitting up there and saying it."

"I think you think it's fair.

"Well."

"You have got a friend sitting there with you."

"Yes."

"I think he thinks it is all right. That is what people are like."

"1 think you think—'well, I'm putting it up to him.'

"What do you think your mother thinks?"

The young man's lips kept twitching. He had a queer look in his eyes.

"I think my mother came down here. She lodged a complaint. She had me arrested."

"I think she did it and that she didn't do it. That's what I think."

And so there I was, in the court of domestic relations. The judge kept hearing cases, he passed sentence, he laughed at couples and sent them home.

When he could stand it no longer he adjourned court. He and I smoked cigarettes. He threw the butts out of a window into the street.

The cases kept coming and coming. There were plenty of cases.

"It just goes on like this, day after day?"

"Yes," he said.

He had a puzzled look in his eyes. It was not unlike the look in the eyes of the woman who had her son arrested for getting drunk and swearing at life.