Windy McPherson's Son

by Sherwood Anderson

And then into his mind came a hundred other thoughts, clamouring thoughts, come out of the hidden parts of him. He began to think that she could lead the way on a road he wanted to travel. He thought of her wealth and what it would mean to a man filled with his hunger for power. And through these thoughts shot others. Something in her had taken hold of him—something that had been also in Janet. He was curious concerning her curiosity about his beliefs, and wanted to question her concerning her own beliefs. He could see none of Colonel Tom’s blustering incompetence in her and thought her filled with truth as a deep spring is filled with clear water. He believed she would give him something, something that all his life he had been wanting. An old aching hunger that had haunted his nights as a boy came back and he thought that at her hand it might be fed.

“I—I must read a book about socialism,” he said lamely.

Again they stood in silence, she looking at the floor, he past her head and out at the window. He could not bring himself to speak again of the proposed talk. He had a boyish dread of having her notice the tremor in his voice.

Colonel Tom came into the room, bursting with an idea Sam had given him at the lunch hour and which in working its way into his mind had become to the colonel’s entirely honest belief an idea of his own. The interruption brought to Sam an intense feeling of relief and he began talking of the colonel’s idea as though it had taken him unawares.

Sue, walking to a window, began tying and untying the curtain cord. When Sam, raising his eyes, looked at her, he caught her eyes watching him intently and she smiled, continuing to look at him squarely. It was his eyes that first broke away.

From that day Sam’s mind was afire with thoughts of Sue Rainey. In his room he sat, or going into Grant Park stood by the lake, looking at the silent, moving water as he had looked in the days when he first came to the city. He did not dream of having her in his arms or of kissing her lips; he thought, instead, with a glowing heart, of a life lived with her. He wanted to walk beside her through the streets, to have her come suddenly in at his office door, to look into her eyes and to have her question him, as she had questioned, concerning his beliefs and his hopes. He thought that in the evening he would like to go to a house of his own and find her sitting there waiting for him. All the charm of his aimless, half-dissolute way of life died in him, and he believed that with her he could begin to live more fully and completely. From the moment when he had definitely decided that he wanted Sue as a wife, Sam stopped overdrinking, going to his room or walking through the streets or in the parks instead of seeking his old companions in the clubs and drinking places. Sometimes pushing his bed to the window overlooking the lake, he would undress immediately after dinner and opening the window would spend half the night watching the lights of boats far away over the water and thinking of her. He would imagine her in the room, moving here and there, and coming occasionally to put her hand in his hair and look down at him as Janet had done, helping by her sane talk and quiet ways to get his life straightened out for good living.

And when he had fallen asleep the face of Sue Rainey came to visit his dreams. One night he thought she had become blind and sat in the room with sightless eyes saying over and over like one demented, “Truth, truth, give me back the truth that I may see,” and he awoke sick with horror at the thought of the look of suffering that had been in her face. Never did Sam dream of having her in his arms or of raining kisses on her lips and neck as he had dreamed of other women who in the past had won his favour.

For all that he thought of her so constantly and built so confidently his dream of a life to be spent with her, months passed before he saw her again. Through Colonel Tom he learned that she had gone for a visit to the East and he went earnestly about his work, keeping his mind on his business during the day and only in the evening allowing himself to become absorbed in thoughts of her. He had a feeling that although he had said nothing she knew of his desire for her and that she wanted time to think it over. Several times in the evening in his room he wrote her long letters filled with minute, boyish explanations of his thoughts and motives, letters which after writing he immediately destroyed. A woman of the west side, with whom he had once had an affair, met him one day on the street, and put her hand familiarly on his arm and for the moment reawakened in him an old desire. After leaving her he did not go back to the office, but taking a south-bound car, spent the afternoon walking in Jackson Park, watching the children at play on the grass, sitting on benches under the trees, getting out of his body and his mind the insistent call of the flesh that had come back to him.

Then in the evening, he came suddenly upon Sue riding a spirited black horse in a bridle path at the upper end of the park. It was just at the grey beginning of night. Stopping the horse, she sat looking at him and going to her he put a hand on the bridle.

“We might have that talk,” he said.