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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories.
by Sherwood Anderson

#3 in our series by Sherwood Anderson

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Title: Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories

Author: Sherwood Anderson

Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7048]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on February 28, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRIUMPH OF THE EGG ***




This eBook was produced by Michelle Shephard, Eric Eldred,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team





                            The Triumph Of The Egg

                            A Book Of Impressions
                             From American Life
                             In Tales And Poems

                                     By
                             Sherwood Anderson

                                 In Clay By
                              Tennessee Mitchell

                         In the fields
                         Seeds on the air floating.
                         In the towns
                         Black smoke for a shroud.
                         In my breast
                         Understanding awake.
                         _Mid American Chants_.

                                    To
                          Robert And John Anderson




Tales are people who sit on the doorstep of the house of my mind.
It is cold outside and they sit waiting.
I look out at a window.

The tales have cold hands,
Their hands are freezing.

A short thickly-built tale arises and threshes his arms about.
His nose is red and he has two gold teeth.

There is an old female tale sitting hunched up in a cloak.

Many tales come to sit for a few moments on the doorstep
     and then go away.
It is too cold for them outside.
The street before the door of the house of my mind is
     filled with tales.
They murmur and cry out, they are dying of cold and hunger.

I am a helpless man--my hands tremble.
I should be sitting on a bench like a tailor.
I should be weaving warm cloth out of the threads of thought.
The tales should be clothed.
They are freezing on the doorstep of the house of my mind.

I am a helpless man--my hands tremble.
I feel in the darkness but cannot find the doorknob.
I look out at a window.
Many tales are dying in the street before the house of my mind.




CONTENTS

THE DUMB MAN
I WANT TO KNOW WHY
SEEDS
THE OTHER WOMAN
THE EGG
UNLIGHTED LAMPS
SENILITY
THE MAN IN THE BROWN COAT
BROTHERS
THE DOOR OF THE TRAP
THE NEW ENGLANDER
WAR
MOTHERHOOD
OUT OF NOWHERE INTO NOTHING
THE MAN WITH THE TRUMPET




THE DUMB MAN


There is a story.--I cannot tell it.--I have no words. The story is
almost forgotten but sometimes I remember.

The story concerns three men in a house in a street. If I could say the
words I would sing the story. I would whisper it into the ears of
women, of mothers. I would run through the streets saying it over and
over. My tongue would be torn loose--it would rattle against my teeth.

The three men are in a room in the house. One is young and dandified.
He continually laughs.

There is a second man who has a long white beard. He is consumed with
doubt but occasionally his doubt leaves him and he sleeps.

A third man there is who has wicked eyes and who moves nervously about
the room rubbing his hands together. The three men are waiting--
waiting.

Upstairs in the house there is a woman standing with her back to a
wall, in half darkness by a window.

That is the foundation of my story and everything I will ever know is
distilled in it.

I remember that a fourth man came to the house, a white silent man.
Everything was as silent as the sea at night. His feet on the stone
floor of the room where the three men were made no sound.

The man with the wicked eyes became like a boiling liquid--he ran back
and forth like a caged animal. The old grey man was infected by his
nervousness--he kept pulling at his beard.

The fourth man, the white one, went upstairs to the woman.

There she was--waiting.

How silent the house was--how loudly all the clocks in the neighborhood
ticked. The woman upstairs craved love. That must have been the story.
She hungered for love with her whole being. She wanted to create in
love. When the white silent man came into her presence she sprang
forward. Her lips were parted. There was a smile on her lips.

The white one said nothing. In his eyes there was no rebuke, no
question. His eyes were as impersonal as stars.

Down stairs the wicked one whined and ran back and forth like a little
lost hungry dog. The grey one tried to follow him about but presently
grew tired and lay down on the floor to sleep. He never awoke again.

The dandified fellow lay on the floor too. He laughed and played with
his tiny black mustache.

I have no words to tell what happened in my story. I cannot tell the
story.

The white silent one may have been Death.

The waiting eager woman may have been Life.

Both the old grey bearded man and the wicked one puzzle me. I think and
think but cannot understand them. Most of the time however I do not
think of them at all. I keep thinking about the dandified man who
laughed all through my story.

If I could understand him I could understand everything. I could run
through the world telling a wonderful story. I would no longer be dumb.

Why was I not given words? Why am I dumb?

I have a wonderful story to tell but know no way to tell it.




I WANT TO KNOW WHY


We got up at four in the morning, that first day in the east. On the
evening before we had climbed off a freight train at the edge of town,
and with the true instinct of Kentucky boys had found our way across
town and to the race track and the stables at once. Then we knew we
were all right. Hanley Turner right away found a nigger we knew. It was
Bildad Johnson who in the winter works at Ed Becker's livery barn in
our home town, Beckersville. Bildad is a good cook as almost all our
niggers are and of course he, like everyone in our part of Kentucky who
is anyone at all, likes the horses. In the spring Bildad begins to
scratch around. A nigger from our country can flatter and wheedle
anyone into letting him do most anything he wants. Bildad wheedles the
stable men and the trainers from the horse farms in our country around
Lexington. The trainers come into town in the evening to stand around
and talk and maybe get into a poker game. Bildad gets in with them. He
is always doing little favors and telling about things to eat, chicken
browned in a pan, and how is the best way to cook sweet potatoes and
corn bread. It makes your mouth water to hear him.

When the racing season comes on and the horses go to the races and
there is all the talk on the streets in the evenings about the new
colts, and everyone says when they are going over to Lexington or to
the spring meeting at Churchhill Downs or to Latonia, and the horsemen
that have been down to New Orleans or maybe at the winter meeting at
Havana in Cuba come home to spend a week before they start out again,
at such a time when everything talked about in Beckersville is just
horses and nothing else and the outfits start out and horse racing is
in every breath of air you breathe, Bildad shows up with a job as cook
for some outfit. Often when I think about it, his always going all
season to the races and working in the livery barn in the winter where
horses are and where men like to come and talk about horses, I wish I
was a nigger. It's a foolish thing to say, but that's the way I am
about being around horses, just crazy. I can't help it.

Well, I must tell you about what we did and let you in on what I'm
talking about. Four of us boys from Beckersville, all whites and sons
of men who live in Beckersville regular, made up our minds we were
going to the races, not just to Lexington or Louisville, I don't mean,
but to the big eastern track we were always hearing our Beckersville
men talk about, to Saratoga. We were all pretty young then. I was just
turned fifteen and I was the oldest of the four. It was my scheme.

I admit that and I talked the others into trying it. There was Hanley
Turner and Henry Rieback and Tom Tumberton and myself. I had thirty-
seven dollars I had earned during the winter working nights and
Saturdays in Enoch Myer's grocery. Henry Rieback had eleven dollars and
the others, Hanley and Tom had only a dollar or two each. We fixed it
all up and laid low until the Kentucky spring meetings were over and
some of our men, the sportiest ones, the ones we envied the most, had
cut out--then we cut out too.

I won't tell you the trouble we had beating our way on freights and
all. We went through Cleveland and Buffalo and other cities and saw
Niagara Falls. We bought things there, souvenirs and spoons and cards
and shells with pictures of the falls on them for our sisters and
mothers, but thought we had better not send any of the things home. We
didn't want to put the folks on our trail and maybe be nabbed.