Poor White: A Novel

by Sherwood Anderson

Clara jumped quickly out of the hammock and walked about under the trees in the orchard. Her thoughts of Jim Priest's youth startled her. It was as though she had walked suddenly into a room where a man and woman were making love. Her cheeks burned and her hands trembled. As she walked slowly through the clumps of grass and weeds that grew between the trees where the sunlight struggled through, bees coming home to the hives heavily laden with honey flew in droves about her head. There was something heady and purposeful about the song of labor that arose out of the beehives. It got into her blood and her step quickened. The words of Jim Priest that kept running through her mind seemed a part of the same song the bees were singing. “The sap has begun to run up the tree,” she repeated aloud. How significant and strange the words seemed! They were the kind of words a lover might use in speaking to his beloved. She had read many novels, but they contained no such words. It was better so. It was better to hear them from human lips. Again she thought of Jim Priest's youth and boldly wished he were still young. She told herself that she would like to see him young and married to a beautiful young woman. She stopped by a fence that looked out upon a hillside meadow. The sun seemed extraordinarily bright, the grass in the meadow greener than she had ever seen it before. Two birds in a tree nearby made love to each other. The female flew madly about and was pursued by the male bird. In his eagerness he was so intent that he flew directly before the girl's face, his wing nearly touching her cheek. She went back through the orchard to the barns and through one of them to the open door of a long shed that was used for housing wagons and buggies, her mind occupied with the idea of finding Jim Priest, of standing perhaps near him. He was not about, but in the open space before the shed, John May, a young man of twenty-two who had just come to work on the farm, was oiling the wheels of a wagon. His back was turned and as he handled the heavy wagon wheels the muscles could be seen playing beneath his thin cotton shirt. “It is so Jim Priest must have looked in his youth,” the girl thought.

The farm girl wanted to approach the young man, to speak to him, to ask him questions concerning many strange things in life she did not understand. She knew that under no circumstances would she be able to do such a thing, that it was but a meaningless dream that had come into her head, but the dream was sweet. She did not, however, want to talk to John May. At the moment she was in a girlish period of being disgusted at what she thought of as the vulgarity of the men who worked on the place. At the table they ate noisily and greedily like hungry animals. She wanted youth that was like her own youth, crude and uncertain perhaps, but reaching eagerly out into the unknown. She wanted to draw very near to something young, strong, gentle, insistent, beautiful. When the farm hand looked up and saw her standing and looking intently at him, she was embarrassed. For a moment the two young animals, so unlike each other, stood staring at each other and then, to relieve her embarrassment, Clara began to play a game. Among the men employed on the farm she had always passed for something of a tomboy. In the hayfields and in the barns she had wrestled and fought playfully with both the old and the young men. To them she had always been a privileged person. They liked her and she was the boss's daughter. One did not get rough with her or say or do rough things. A basket of corn stood just within the door of the shed, and running to it Clara took an ear of the yellow corn and threw it at the farm hand. It struck a post of the barn just above his head. Laughing shrilly Clara ran into the shed among the wagons, and the farm hand pursued her.

John May was a very determined man. He was the son of a laborer in Bidwell and for two or three years had been employed about the stable of a doctor, something had happened between him and the doctor's wife and he had left the place because he had a notion that the doctor was becoming suspicious. The experience had taught him the value of boldness in dealing with women. Ever since he had come to work on the Butterworth farm, he had been having thoughts regarding the girl who had now, he imagined, given him direct challenge. He was a little amazed by her boldness but did not stop to ask himself questions, she had openly invited him to pursue her. That was enough. His accustomed awkwardness and clumsiness went away and he leaped lightly over the extended tongues of wagons and buggies. He caught Clara in dark corner of the shed. Without a word he took her tightly into his arms and kissed her, first upon the neck and then on the mouth. She lay trembling and weak in his arms and he took hold of the collar of her dress and tore it open. Her brown neck and one of her hard, round breasts were exposed. Clara's eyes grew big with fright. Strength came back into her body. With her sharp hard little fist she struck John May in the face; and when he stepped back she ran quickly out of the shed. John May did not understand. He thought she had sought him out once and would return. “She's a little green. I was too fast. I scared her. Next time I'll go a little easy,” he thought.

Clara ran through the barn and then walked slowly to the house and went upstairs to her own room. A farm dog followed her up the stairs and stood at her door wagging his tail. She shut the door in his face. For the moment everything that lived and breathed seemed to her gross and ugly. Her cheeks were pale and she pulled shut the blinds to the window and sat down on the bed, overcome with the strange new fear of life. She did not want even the sunlight to come into her presence. John May had followed her through the barn and now stood in the barnyard staring at the house. She could see him through the cracks of the blinds and wished it were possible to kill him with a gesture of her hand.

The farm hand, full of male confidence, waited for her to come to the window and look down at him. He wondered if there were any one else in the house. Perhaps she would beckon to him. Something of the kind had happened between him and the doctor's wife and it had turned out that way. When after five or ten minutes he did not see her, he went back to the work of oiling the wagon wheels. “It's going to be a slower thing. She's shy, a green girl,” he told himself.

One evening a week later Clara sat on the side porch of the house with her father when John May came into the barnyard. It was a Wednesday evening and the farm hands were not in the habit of going into town until Saturday, but he was dressed in his Sunday clothes and had shaved and oiled his hair. On the occasion of a wedding or a funeral the laborers put oil in their hair. It was indicative of something very important about to happen. Clara looked at him, and in spite of the feeling of repugnance that swept over her, her eyes glistened. Ever since the affair in the barn she had managed to avoid meeting him but she was not afraid. He had in fact taught her something. There was a power within her with which she could conquer men. The touch of her father's shrewdness, that was a part of her nature, had come to her rescue. She wanted to laugh at the silly pretensions of the man, to make a fool of him. Her cheeks flushed with pride in her mastery of the situation.

John May walked almost to the house and then turned along the path that led to the road. He made a gesture with his hand and by chance Tom Butterworth, who had been looking off across the open country toward Bidwell, turned and saw both the movement and the leering confident smile on the farm hand's face. He arose and followed John May into the road, astonishment and anger fighting for possession of him. The two men stood talking for three minutes in the road before the house and then returned. The farm hand went to the barn and then came back along the path to the road carrying under his arm a grain bag containing his work clothes. He did not look up as he went past. The farmer returned to the porch.

The misunderstanding that was to wreck the tender relationship that had begun to grow up between father and daughter began on that evening. Tom Butterworth was furious. He muttered and clinched his fists. Clara's heart beat heavily. For some reason she felt guilty, as though she had been caught in an intrigue with the man. For a long time her father remained silent and then he, like the farm hand, made a furious and brutal attack on her. “Where have you been with that fellow? What you been up to?” he asked harshly.

For a time Clara did not answer her father's question. She wanted to scream, to strike him in the face with her fist as she had struck the man in the shed. Then her mind struggled to take hold of the new situation. The fact that her father had accused her of seeking the thing that had happened made her hate John May less heartily. She had some one else to hate.

Clara did not think the matter out clearly on that first evening but, after denying that she had ever been anywhere with John May, burst into tears and ran into the house. In the darkness of her own room she began to think of her father's words. For some reason she could not understand, the attack made on her spirit seemed more terrible and unforgivable than the attack upon her body made by the farm hand in the shed. She began to understand vaguely that the young man had been confused by her presence on that warm sunshiny afternoon as she had been confused by the words uttered by Jim Priest, by the song of the bees in the orchard, by the love-making of the birds, and by her own uncertain thoughts. He had been confused and he was stupid and young. There had been an excuse for his confusion. It was understandable and could be dealt with. She had now no doubt of her own ability to deal with John May. As for her father—it was all right for him to be suspicious regarding the farm hand, but why had he been suspicious of her?