A story teller's story

by Sherwood Anderson

I came to a bridge and stood for a time looking down into the water and then went on across the bridge along a road and into a field where long grass grew. It was a summer night and I was sleepy but after I had slept, perhaps for several hours, I was awakened by something going on in the field and within a few feet of me.

The field was small and two houses stood facing it, the one near where I lay in a fence corner and the other a few hundred yards away. When I had come into the field lights were lighted in both houses but now they were both dark and before me—some ten paces away—three men were struggling silently while near them stood a woman who held her hands over her face and who sobbed, not loudly but with a kind of low wailing cry. There was something, dimly seen, something white, lying on the ground near the woman and suddenly by a kind of flash of intuition I understood what had happened. The white thing on the ground was a woman’s garment.

The three men were struggling desperately and even in the dim light it was evident that two of them were trying to overcome the third. He was the woman’s lover and lived in the house at the end of the path that crossed the field and the two others were her brothers. They had gone into the town for the evening and had come home late and as they were walking silently across the grass in the field they had stumbled upon the love-makers and in a flash there was the impulse to kill their sister’s lover. Perhaps they felt the honor of their house had been destroyed.

And now one of them had got a knife out of his pocket and had slashed at the lover, laying his cheek open, and they might have killed the man as the woman and I watched trembling but at that moment he got away and ran across the field toward his own house followed by the others.

I was left alone in the field with the woman—we were within a few feet of each other—and for a long time she did not move. “After all I am not a man of action. I am a recorder of things, a teller of tales.” It was somewhat thus I excused myself for not coming to the lover’s aid, as I lay perfectly still in the fence corner, looking and listening. The woman continued to sob and now, from across the dark field, there was a shout. The lover had not succeeded in getting into his own house, was really but a step ahead of his pursuers, and perhaps did not dare risk trying to open a door. He ran back across the field, dodging here and there, and passing near us crossed the bridge into the road that led to town. The woman in the field began calling, evidently to her two brothers, but they paid no attention. “John. Fred!” she called between her sobs. “Stop! Stop!”

And now again all was silent in the field and I could hear the rapid steps of the three running men in the dusty road in the distance.

Then lights appeared in both the houses facing the field and the woman went into the house near me, still sobbing bitterly, and presently there were voices to be heard. Then the woman—now fully clad—came out and went across the field to the second house and presently came back with another woman. Their skirts almost brushed my face as they passed me.

The three sat on the steps of the house on my side of the field, all crying, and above the sound of their crying I could still hear, far off, the sound of running feet. The lover had got into the town, which was but half a mile away, and was evidently dodging through streets. Was the town aroused? Now and then shouts came from the distance. I had no watch and did not know how long I had slept in the field.

Now all became silent again and there were just the four people, myself lying trembling in the grass and the three women on the steps of the house near me, and all three crying softly. Time passed. What had happened? What would happen? In fancy I saw the running man caught and perhaps killed in some dark little side street of an Indiana farming town into which I had been thrown by the accident that a railroad brakeman had seen me standing on the bumpers between two cars of his train and had ordered me off. “Well, get off or give me a dollar,” he had said, and I had not wanted to give him a dollar. I had only had three dollars in my pocket. Why should I give one to him? “There will be other freight trains,” I had said to myself, “and perhaps I shall see something of interest here in this town.”

Interest indeed! Now I lay in the grass trembling with fear. In fancy I had become the lover of the younger of the three women sitting on the steps of the house and my sweetheart’s brothers with open knives in their hands were pursuing me in a dark street. I felt the knives slashing my body and knew that what I felt the three women also felt. Every few minutes the younger of the three cried out. It was as though a knife had gone into her body. All four of us trembled with fear.