Chapter: RESPECTABILITY

If you have lived in cities and have walked in the park
on a summer afternoon, you have perhaps seen, blinking
in a corner of his iron cage, a huge, grotesque kind of
monkey, a creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin
below his eyes and a bright purple underbody. This
monkey is a true monster. In the completeness of his
ugliness he achieved a kind of perverted beauty.
Children stopping before the cage are fascinated, men
turn away with an air of disgust, and women linger for
a moment, trying perhaps to remember which one of their
male acquaintances the thing in some faint way
resembles.

Had you been in the earlier years of your life a
citizen of the village of Winesburg, Ohio, there would
have been for you no mystery in regard to the beast in
his cage. "It is like Wash Williams," you would have
said. "As he sits in the corner there, the beast is
exactly like old Wash sitting on the grass in the
station yard on a summer evening after he has closed
his office for the night."

Wash Williams, the telegraph operator of Winesburg, was
the ugliest thing in town. His girth was immense, his
neck thin, his legs feeble. He was dirty. Everything
about him was unclean. Even the whites of his eyes
looked soiled.

I go too fast. Not everything about Wash was unclean.
He took care of his hands. His fingers were fat, but
there was something sensitive and shapely in the hand
that lay on the table by the instrument in the
telegraph office. In his youth Wash Williams had been
called the best telegraph operator in the state, and in
spite of his degradement to the obscure office at
Winesburg, he was still proud of his ability.

Wash Williams did not associate with the men of the
town in which he lived. "I'll have nothing to do with
them," he said, looking with bleary eyes at the men who
walked along the station platform past the telegraph
office. Up along Main Street he went in the evening to
Ed Griffith's saloon, and after drinking unbelievable
quantities of beer staggered off to his room in the New
Willard House and to his bed for the night.

Wash Williams was a man of courage. A thing had
happened to him that made him hate life, and he hated
it wholeheartedly, with the abandon of a poet. First of
all, he hated women. "Bitches," he called them. His
feeling toward men was somewhat different. He pitied
them. "Does not every man let his life be managed for
him by some bitch or another?" he asked.

In Winesburg no attention was paid to Wash Williams and
his hatred of his fellows. Once Mrs. White, the
banker's wife, complained to the telegraph company,
saying that the office in Winesburg was dirty and
smelled abominably, but nothing came of her complaint.
Here and there a man respected the operator.
Instinctively the man felt in him a glowing resentment
of something he had not the courage to resent. When
Wash walked through the streets such a one had an
instinct to pay him homage, to raise his hat or to bow
before him. The superintendent who had supervision over
the telegraph operators on the railroad that went
through Winesburg felt that way. He had put Wash into
the obscure office at Winesburg to avoid discharging
him, and he meant to keep him there. When he received
the letter of complaint from the banker's wife, he tore
it up and laughed unpleasantly. For some reason he
thought of his own wife as he tore up the letter.

Wash Williams once had a wife. When he was still a
young man he married a woman at Dayton, Ohio. The woman
was tall and slender and had blue eyes and yellow hair.
Wash was himself a comely youth. He loved the woman
with a love as absorbing as the hatred he later felt
for all women.

In all of Winesburg there was but one person who knew
the story of the thing that had made ugly the person
and the character of Wash Williams. He once told the
story to George Willard and the telling of the tale
came about in this way:

George Willard went one evening to walk with Belle
Carpenter, a trimmer of women's hats who worked in a
millinery shop kept by Mrs. Kate McHugh. The young man
was not in love with the woman, who, in fact, had a
suitor who worked as bartender in Ed Griffith's saloon,
but as they walked about under the trees they
occasionally embraced. The night and their own thoughts
had aroused something in them. As they were returning
to Main Street they passed the little lawn beside the
railroad station and saw Wash Williams apparently
asleep on the grass beneath a tree. On the next evening
the operator and George Willard walked out together.
Down the railroad they went and sat on a pile of
decaying railroad ties beside the tracks. It was then
that the operator told the young reporter his story of
hate.

Perhaps a dozen times George Willard and the strange,
shapeless man who lived at his father's hotel had been
on the point of talking. The young man looked at the
hideous, leering face staring about the hotel dining
room and was consumed with curiosity. Something he saw
lurking in the staring eyes told him that the man who
had nothing to say to others had nevertheless something
to say to him. On the pile of railroad ties on the
summer evening, he waited expectantly. When the
operator remained silent and seemed to have changed his
mind about talking, he tried to make conversation.
"Were you ever married, Mr. Williams?" he began. "I
suppose you were and your wife is dead, is that it?"

Wash Williams spat forth a succession of vile oaths.
"Yes, she is dead," he agreed. "She is dead as all
women are dead. She is a living-dead thing, walking in
the sight of men and making the earth foul by her
presence." Staring into the boy's eyes, the man became
purple with rage. "Don't have fool notions in your
head," he commanded. "My wife, she is dead; yes,
surely. I tell you, all women are dead, my mother, your
mother, that tall dark woman who works in the millinery
store and with whom I saw you walking about
yesterday--all of them, they are all dead. I tell you
there is something rotten about them. I was married,
sure. My wife was dead before she married me, she was a
foul thing come out a woman more foul. She was a thing
sent to make life unbearable to me. I was a fool, do
you see, as you are now, and so I married this woman. I
would like to see men a little begin to understand
women. They are sent to prevent men making the world
worth while. It is a trick in Nature. Ugh! They are
creeping, crawling, squirming things, they with their
soft hands and their blue eyes. The sight of a woman
sickens me. Why I don't kill every woman I see I don't
know."

Half frightened and yet fascinated by the light burning
in the eyes of the hideous old man, George Willard
listened, afire with curiosity. Darkness came on and he
leaned forward trying to see the face of the man who
talked. When, in the gathering darkness, he could no
longer see the purple, bloated face and the burning
eyes, a curious fancy came to him. Wash Williams talked
in low even tones that made his words seem the more
terrible. In the darkness the young reporter found
himself imagining that he sat on the railroad ties
beside a comely young man with black hair and black
shining eyes. There was something almost beautiful in
the voice of Wash Williams, the hideous, telling his
story of hate.

The telegraph operator of Winesburg, sitting in the
darkness on the railroad ties, had become a poet.
Hatred had raised him to that elevation. "It is because
I saw you kissing the lips of that Belle Carpenter that
I tell you my story," he said. "What happened to me may
next happen to you. I want to put you on your guard.
Already you may be having dreams in your head. I want
to destroy them."

Wash Williams began telling the story of his married
life with the tall blonde girl with the blue eyes whom
he had met when he was a young operator at Dayton,
Ohio. Here and there his story was touched with moments
of beauty intermingled with strings of vile curses. The
operator had married the daughter of a dentist who was
the youngest of three sisters. On his marriage day,
because of his ability, he was promoted to a position
as dispatcher at an increased salary and sent to an
office at Columbus, Ohio. There he settled down with
his young wife and began buying a house on the
installment plan.

The young telegraph operator was madly in love. With a
kind of religious fervor he had managed to go through
the pitfalls of his youth and to remain virginal until
after his marriage. He made for George Willard a
picture of his life in the house at Columbus, Ohio,
with the young wife. "In the garden back of our house
we planted vegetables," he said, "you know, peas and
corn and such things. We went to Columbus in early
March and as soon as the days became warm I went to
work in the garden. With a spade I turned up the black
ground while she ran about laughing and pretending to
be afraid of the worms I uncovered. Late in April came
the planting. In the little paths among the seed beds
she stood holding a paper bag in her hand. The bag was
filled with seeds. A few at a time she handed me the
seeds that I might thrust them into the warm, soft
ground."

For a moment there was a catch in the voice of the man
talking in the darkness. "I loved her," he said. "I
don't claim not to be a fool. I love her yet. There in
the dusk in the spring evening I crawled along the
black ground to her feet and groveled before her. I
kissed her shoes and the ankles above her shoes. When
the hem of her garment touched my face I trembled. When
after two years of that life I found she had managed to
acquire three other lovers who came regularly to our
house when I was away at work, I didn't want to touch
them or her. I just sent her home to her mother and
said nothing. There was nothing to say. I had four
hundred dollars in the bank and I gave her that. I
didn't ask her reasons. I didn't say anything. When she
had gone I cried like a silly boy. Pretty soon I had a
chance to sell the house and I sent that money to her."

Wash Williams and George Willard arose from the pile of
railroad ties and walked along the tracks toward town.
The operator finished his tale quickly, breathlessly.

"Her mother sent for me," he said. "She wrote me a
letter and asked me to come to their house at Dayton.
When I got there it was evening about this time."

Wash Williams' voice rose to a half scream. "I sat in
the parlor of that house two hours. Her mother took me
in there and left me. Their house was stylish. They
were what is called respectable people. There were
plush chairs and a couch in the room. I was trembling
all over. I hated the men I thought had wronged her. I
was sick of living alone and wanted her back. The
longer I waited the more raw and tender I became. I
thought that if she came in and just touched me with
her hand I would perhaps faint away. I ached to forgive
and forget."

Wash Williams stopped and stood staring at George
Willard. The boy's body shook as from a chill. Again
the man's voice became soft and low. "She came into the
room naked," he went on. "Her mother did that. While I
sat there she was taking the girl's clothes off,
perhaps coaxing her to do it. First I heard voices at
the door that led into a little hallway and then it
opened softly. The girl was ashamed and stood perfectly
still staring at the floor. The mother didn't come into
the room. When she had pushed the girl in through the
door she stood in the hallway waiting, hoping we
would--well, you see--waiting."

George Willard and the telegraph operator came into the
main street of Winesburg. The lights from the store
windows lay bright and shining on the sidewalks. People
moved about laughing and talking. The young reporter
felt ill and weak. In imagination, he also became old
and shapeless. "I didn't get the mother killed," said
Wash Williams, staring up and down the street. "I
struck her once with a chair and then the neighbors
came in and took it away. She screamed so loud you see.
I won't ever have a chance to kill her now. She died of
a fever a month after that happened."

 In Winesburg, Wash Williams works as a telegraph operator, he is the ugliest man to be seen in the town. He is immense, with thin legs and neck, and is extremely filthy. His hands, however, though fat, are shapely and look sensitive. The townsfolk avoid any contact with him and so does he. Any complaints about his filth are ignored, as he is a very competent telegraph operator. It is George Willard who manages to extricate Wash's life story out. Once on seeing George and a young girl embracing and kissing while taking a night walk, Wash, the next day, accompanies George, and tells his whole story. It turns out that he had once been married to a very beautiful girl, whom he was madly in love with. He had bought a house for her, and catered to her every need. But he finally realized that she used to bring her lovers to his own house, in his absence. In anger and humiliation he and Wash Williams packed her off to her mother's house with all the money from his bank account. Much later, the girl's mother had sent for him. The girl's house turned out to be a stylish, respectable house. Wash, while waiting for her, began feeling that perhaps he has wronged her and has decided to take her back. But when the girl entered, she was naked. Her mother had apparently removed all her clothes and sent her to him, in the hope that he would be mesmerized by her and would make love to her. Wash, in his anger, slapped the mother and walked out. Wash has told his story to George, wishing him to understand the vile nature of women. He considered all women to be hateful, convincing creatures, who should be best avoided and he wanted George to remember this.

