Marching Men

by Sherwood Anderson

CHAPTER IV

The people of Chicago go home from their work at evening—drifting they go in droves, hurrying along. It is a startling thing to look closely at them. The people have bad mouths. Their mouths are slack and the jaws do not hang right. The mouths are like the shoes they wear. The shoes have become run down at the corners from too much pounding on the hard pavements and the mouths have become crooked from too much weariness of soul.

Something is wrong with modern American life and we Americans do not want to look at it. We much prefer to call ourselves a great people and let it go at that.

It is evening and the people of Chicago go home from work. Clatter, clatter, clatter, go the heels on the hard pavements, jaws wag, the wind blows and dirt drifts and sifts through the masses of the people. Every one has dirty ears. The stench in the street cars is horrible. The antiquated bridges over the rivers are packed with people. The suburban trains going away south and west are cheaply constructed and dangerous. A people calling itself great and living in a city also called great go to their houses a mere disorderly mass of humans cheaply equipped. Everything is cheap. When the people get home to their houses they sit on cheap chairs before cheap tables and eat cheap food. They have given their lives for cheap things. The poorest peasant of one of the old countries is surrounded by more beauty. His very equipment for living has more solidity.

The modern man is satisfied with what is cheap and unlovely because he expects to rise in the world. He has given his life to that dreary dream and he is teaching his children to follow the same dream. McGregor was touched by it. Being confused by the matter of sex he had listened to the advice of the barber and meant to settle things in the cheap way. One evening a month after the talk in the park he hurried along Lake Street on the West Side with that end in view. It was near eight o'clock and growing dark and McGregor should have been at the night school. Instead he walked along the street looking at the ill-kept frame houses. A fever burned in his blood. An impulse, for the moment stronger than the impulse that kept him at work over books night after night there in the big disorderly city and as yet stronger than any new impulse toward a vigorous compelling march through life, had hold of him. His eyes stared into the windows. He hurried along filled with a lust that stultified his brain and will. A woman sitting at the window of a little frame house smiled and beckoned to him.

McGregor walked along the path leading to the little frame house. The path ran through a squalid yard. It was a foul place like the court under his window behind the house in Wycliff Place. Here also discoloured papers worried by the wind ran about in crazy circles. McGregor's heart pounded and his mouth felt dry and unpleasant. He wondered what he should say and how he should say it when he came into the presence of the woman. He wished there were some one to be hit with his fist. He didn't want to make love, he wanted relief. He would have much preferred a fight.

The veins in McGregor's neck began to swell and as he stood in the darkness before the door of the house he swore. He stared up and down the street but the sky, the sight of which might have helped him, was hidden from view by the structure of an elevated railroad. Pushing open the door of the house he stepped in. In the dim light he could see nothing but a form sprang out of the darkness and a pair of powerful arms pinned his hands to his sides. McGregor looked quickly about A man huge as himself held him tightly against the door. He had one glass eye and a stubby black beard and in the half light looked sinister and dangerous. The hand of the woman who had beckoned to him from the window fumbled in McGregor's pockets and came out clutching a little roll of money. Her face, set now and ugly like the man's, looked up at him from under the arms of her ally.

In a moment McGregor's heart stopped pounding and the dry unpleasant taste went out of his mouth. He felt relieved and glad at this sudden turn to the affair.

With a quick upward snap of his knees into the stomach of the man who had held him McGregor freed himself. A swinging blow to the neck sent his assailant groaning to the floor. McGregor sprang across the room. In the corner by the bed he caught the woman. Clutching her by the hair he whirled her about. “Hand over that money,” he said fiercely.

The woman put up her hands and plead with him. The grip of his hands in her hair brought the tears to her eyes. She thrust the roll of bills into his hands and waited, trembling, thinking he intended to kill her.