Chapter: THE UNTOLD LIE

Ray Pearson and Hal Winters were farm hands employed on
a farm three miles north of Winesburg. On Saturday
afternoons they came into town and wandered about
through the streets with other fellows from the
country.

Ray was a quiet, rather nervous man of perhaps fifty
with a brown beard and shoulders rounded by too much
and too hard labor. In his nature he was as unlike Hal
Winters as two men can be unlike.

Ray was an altogether serious man and had a little
sharp-featured wife who had also a sharp voice. The
two, with half a dozen thin-legged children, lived in a
tumble-down frame house beside a creek at the back end
of the Wills farm where Ray was employed.

Hal Winters, his fellow employee, was a young fellow.
He was not of the Ned Winters family, who were very
respectable people in Winesburg, but was one of the
three sons of the old man called Windpeter Winters who
had a sawmill near Unionville, six miles away, and who
was looked upon by everyone in Winesburg as a confirmed
old reprobate.

People from the part of Northern Ohio in which
Winesburg lies will remember old Windpeter by his
unusual and tragic death. He got drunk one evening in
town and started to drive home to Unionville along the
railroad tracks. Henry Brattenburg, the butcher, who
lived out that way, stopped him at the edge of the town
and told him he was sure to meet the down train but
Windpeter slashed at him with his whip and drove on.
When the train struck and killed him and his two horses
a farmer and his wife who were driving home along a
nearby road saw the accident. They said that old
Windpeter stood up on the seat of his wagon, raving and
swearing at the onrushing locomotive, and that he
fairly screamed with delight when the team, maddened by
his incessant slashing at them, rushed straight ahead
to certain death. Boys like young George Willard and
Seth Richmond will remember the incident quite vividly
because, although everyone in our town said that the
old man would go straight to hell and that the
community was better off without him, they had a secret
conviction that he knew what he was doing and admired
his foolish courage. Most boys have seasons of wishing
they could die gloriously instead of just being grocery
clerks and going on with their humdrum lives.

But this is not the story of Windpeter Winters nor yet
of his son Hal who worked on the Wills farm with Ray
Pearson. It is Ray's story. It will, however, be
necessary to talk a little of young Hal so that you
will get into the spirit of it.

Hal was a bad one. Everyone said that. There were
three of the Winters boys in that family, John, Hal,
and Edward, all broad-shouldered big fellows like old
Windpeter himself and all fighters and woman-chasers
and generally all-around bad ones.

Hal was the worst of the lot and always up to some
devilment. He once stole a load of boards from his
father's mill and sold them in Winesburg. With the
money he bought himself a suit of cheap, flashy
clothes. Then he got drunk and when his father came
raving into town to find him, they met and fought with
their fists on Main Street and were arrested and put
into jail together.

Hal went to work on the Wills farm because there was a
country school teacher out that way who had taken his
fancy. He was only twenty-two then but had already been
in two or three of what were spoken of in Winesburg as
"women scrapes." Everyone who heard of his infatuation
for the school teacher was sure it would turn out
badly. "He'll only get her into trouble, you'll see,"
was the word that went around.

And so these two men, Ray and Hal, were at work in a
field on a day in the late October. They were husking
corn and occasionally something was said and they
laughed. Then came silence. Ray, who was the more
sensitive and always minded things more, had chapped
hands and they hurt. He put them into his coat pockets
and looked away across the fields. He was in a sad,
distracted mood and was affected by the beauty of the
country. If you knew the Winesburg country in the fall
and how the low hills are all splashed with yellows and
reds you would understand his feeling. He began to
think of the time, long ago when he was a young fellow
living with his father, then a baker in Winesburg, and
how on such days he had wandered away into the woods to
gather nuts, hunt rabbits, or just to loaf about and
smoke his pipe. His marriage had come about through one
of his days of wandering. He had induced a girl who
waited on trade in his father's shop to go with him and
something had happened. He was thinking of that
afternoon and how it had affected his whole life when a
spirit of protest awoke in him. He had forgotten about
Hal and muttered words. "Tricked by Gad, that's what I
was, tricked by life and made a fool of," he said in a
low voice.

As though understanding his thoughts, Hal Winters spoke
up. "Well, has it been worth while? What about it, eh?
What about marriage and all that?" he asked and then
laughed. Hal tried to keep on laughing but he too was
in an earnest mood. He began to talk earnestly. "Has a
fellow got to do it?" he asked. "Has he got to be
harnessed up and driven through life like a horse?"

Hal didn't wait for an answer but sprang to his feet
and began to walk back and forth between the corn
shocks. He was getting more and more excited. Bending
down suddenly he picked up an ear of the yellow corn
and threw it at the fence. "I've got Nell Gunther in
trouble," he said. "I'm telling you, but you keep your
mouth shut."

Ray Pearson arose and stood staring. He was almost a
foot shorter than Hal, and when the younger man came
and put his two hands on the older man's shoulders they
made a picture. There they stood in the big empty field
with the quiet corn shocks standing in rows behind them
and the red and yellow hills in the distance, and from
being just two indifferent workmen they had become all
alive to each other. Hal sensed it and because that was
his way he laughed. "Well, old daddy," he said
awkwardly, "come on, advise me. I've got Nell in
trouble. Perhaps you've been in the same fix yourself.
I know what everyone would say is the right thing to
do, but what do you say? Shall I marry and settle down?
Shall I put myself into the harness to be worn out like
an old horse? You know me, Ray. There can't anyone
break me but I can break myself. Shall I do it or shall
I tell Nell to go to the devil? Come on, you tell me.
Whatever you say, Ray, I'll do."

Ray couldn't answer. He shook Hal's hands loose and
turning walked straight away toward the barn. He was a
sensitive man and there were tears in his eyes. He knew
there was only one thing to say to Hal Winters, son of
old Windpeter Winters, only one thing that all his own
training and all the beliefs of the people he knew
would approve, but for his life he couldn't say what he
knew he should say.

At half-past four that afternoon Ray was puttering
about the barnyard when his wife came up the lane along
the creek and called him. After the talk with Hal he
hadn't returned to the cornfield but worked about the
barn. He had already done the evening chores and had
seen Hal, dressed and ready for a roistering night in
town, come out of the farmhouse and go into the road.
Along the path to his own house he trudged behind his
wife, looking at the ground and thinking. He couldn't
make out what was wrong. Every time he raised his eyes
and saw the beauty of the country in the failing light
he wanted to do something he had never done before,
shout or scream or hit his wife with his fists or
something equally unexpected and terrifying. Along the
path he went scratching his head and trying to make it
out. He looked hard at his wife's back but she seemed
all right.

She only wanted him to go into town for groceries and
as soon as she had told him what she wanted began to
scold. "You're always puttering," she said. "Now I want
you to hustle. There isn't anything in the house for
supper and you've got to get to town and back in a
hurry."

Ray went into his own house and took an overcoat from a
hook back of the door. It was torn about the pockets
and the collar was shiny. His wife went into the
bedroom and presently came out with a soiled cloth in
one hand and three silver dollars in the other.
Somewhere in the house a child wept bitterly and a dog
that had been sleeping by the stove arose and yawned.
Again the wife scolded. "The children will cry and cry.
Why are you always puttering?" she asked.

Ray went out of the house and climbed the fence into a
field. It was just growing dark and the scene that lay
before him was lovely. All the low hills were washed
with color and even the little clusters of bushes in
the corners of the fences were alive with beauty. The
whole world seemed to Ray Pearson to have become alive
with something just as he and Hal had suddenly become
alive when they stood in the corn field staring into
each other's eyes.

The beauty of the country about Winesburg was too much
for Ray on that fall evening. That is all there was to
it. He could not stand it. Of a sudden he forgot all
about being a quiet old farm hand and throwing off the
torn overcoat began to run across the field. As he ran
he shouted a protest against his life, against all
life, against everything that makes life ugly. "There
was no promise made," he cried into the empty spaces
that lay about him. "I didn't promise my Minnie
anything and Hal hasn't made any promise to Nell. I
know he hasn't. She went into the woods with him
because she wanted to go. What he wanted she wanted.
Why should I pay? Why should Hal pay? Why should anyone
pay? I don't want Hal to become old and worn out. I'll
tell him. I won't let it go on. I'll catch Hal before
he gets to town and I'll tell him."

Ray ran clumsily and once he stumbled and fell down.
"I must catch Hal and tell him," he kept thinking, and
although his breath came in gasps he kept running
harder and harder. As he ran he thought of things that
hadn't come into his mind for years--how at the time he
married he had planned to go west to his uncle in
Portland, Oregon--how he hadn't wanted to be a farm
hand, but had thought when he got out West he would go
to sea and be a sailor or get a job on a ranch and ride
a horse into Western towns, shouting and laughing and
waking the people in the houses with his wild cries.
Then as he ran he remembered his children and in fancy
felt their hands clutching at him. All of his thoughts
of himself were involved with the thoughts of Hal and
he thought the children were clutching at the younger
man also. "They are the accidents of life, Hal," he
cried. "They are not mine or yours. I had nothing to do
with them."

Darkness began to spread over the fields as Ray Pearson
ran on and on. His breath came in little sobs. When he
came to the fence at the edge of the road and
confronted Hal Winters, all dressed up and smoking a
pipe as he walked jauntily along, he could not have
told what he thought or what he wanted.

Ray Pearson lost his nerve and this is really the end
of the story of what happened to him. It was almost
dark when he got to the fence and he put his hands on
the top bar and stood staring. Hal Winters jumped a
ditch and coming up close to Ray put his hands into his
pockets and laughed. He seemed to have lost his own
sense of what had happened in the corn field and when
he put up a strong hand and took hold of the lapel of
Ray's coat he shook the old man as he might have shaken
a dog that had misbehaved.

"You came to tell me, eh?" he said. "Well, never mind
telling me anything. I'm not a coward and I've already
made up my mind." He laughed again and jumped back
across the ditch. "Nell ain't no fool," he said. "She
didn't ask me to marry her. I want to marry her. I want
to settle down and have kids."

Ray Pearson also laughed. He felt like laughing at
himself and all the world.

As the form of Hal Winters disappeared in the dusk that
lay over the road that led to Winesburg, he turned and
walked slowly back across the fields to where he had
left his torn overcoat. As he went some memory of
pleasant evenings spent with the thin-legged children
in the tumble-down house by the creek must have come
into his mind, for he muttered words. "It's just as
well. Whatever I told him would have been a lie," he
said softly, and then his form also disappeared into
the darkness of the fields.

 Ray Pearson, an older farmhand, is a quiet man. He is married to a shrewish woman whom he had to marry after he got her pregnant many years ago. They have six children. His colleague, Hal Winters, is a young, boisterous man who has gotten his girlfriend pregnant. One day in October, when they are working together in a field, Hal asks Ray what he ought to do. Ray does not answer. He cannot bring himself to say what he knows he should say. Later, after returning to his shrewish wife, Ray wants to help the other man avoid his fate. He runs after Hal, intending to tell the young man not to get tied down in a marriage. When he catches up with Hal, he cannot say what he came to say. Hal laughs, knowing what Ray was going to say, and tells him that he wants to marry Nell and have a family. Nell has not asked him to marry her, but he is ready to be married. As he walks home, Ray has a pleasant memory of evenings spent with his children, and he realizes that whatever he had planned to tell Hal would have been a lie.

