The Great Accident

by Ben Ames Williams

Four were human; one was a dog.

The office was lighted by a single oil lamp. The chimney of this lamp had once been badly smoked, and subsequently cleaned by a masculine hand. It was, to put it gently, dingy. Also, its wick needed trimming. As a result of these defects, the light it gave was not blinding.

This lamp stood on a square table in one corner of the room. A wall bench ran along two sides of the table. At the corner, a checkerboard was set on the table, and over this board two old men leaned. They were engrossed in their game. Both were gray, both were unclean, both were ragged. Both were bearded, and the beards of both were stained, below the mouth, with tobacco. Nevertheless, they played keenly, and at the conclusion of each game broke into bitter, cackling arguments. These arguments lasted only so long as it took them to rearrange the men, when the one whose turn it was made the first move, and silence instantly descended on them again.

These gusts of debate which broke from the old men now and then were the only sounds in the room.

Beside one of the men, and leaning forward over the table in a strained and awkward position, was the boy. He may have been fourteen years old. But it was strange and pitiful to see in his face, in his eyes, an air of age and grim experience almost equaling that of his two old companions. This boy was dressed in clothes too small for him, so that his wrists stuck out from his sleeves, his neck reared itself bare and gaunt above his coat collar, and his pale ankles and shins were exposed above the shoes he wore.

This boy was reading. He was reading a copy of the bulletin of the Ohio Brewers’ Association. He was spelling it out word by word, with the closest attention. When the old men burst into argument, the boy shook his head a little as though annoyed by their outcries. But for the rest, he read steadily, passing his fingers along the lines as he read.

The dog slept on the floor at his feet. The dog was just a dog.

The other person in the room was the manager of the Weaver House. The manager was a woman. The manager was also the owner. She sat in a chair beside what had been the bar, at one side of the room. Her hands were folded in her lap, her head lolled on one shoulder, her mouth was open, and she was asleep.

This woman was a virago. In the old days, she once hit a brakeman with a rubber bung starter, and he died. She was acquitted because the brakeman was drunk and she pleaded self-defense. She was feared and respected by the men among whom she lived. In Paris, in ’93, she would have been a commanding figure. In the Nail Mill Addition of Hardiston she was a plague. But as she sat here now, asleep, her old hands folded in her lap, she invited not fear nor disgust but just compassion.

She was merely a tired old woman, asleep.