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The
story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like
unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name.
Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it.
The hands alarmed their owner. He
wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet
inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or
passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.
When
he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum closed his fists and beat with
them upon a table or on the walls of his house.
The action made him more comfortable.
If the desire to talk came to him when the two were walking in the
fields, he sought out a stump or the top board of a fence and with his hands
pounding busily talked with renewed ease.
The
story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is worth a book in itself.
Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful
qualities in obscure men. It is
a job for a poet. In Winesburg
the hands had attracted attention merely because of their activity. With
them Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of
strawberries in a day. They became his distinguishing feature, the source of
his fame. Also they made more
grotesque an already grotesque and elusive individuality. Winesburg was proud of the hands of Wing Biddlebaum in the
same spirit in which it was proud of Banker White's new stone house and
Wesley Moyer's bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the two-fifteen trot at
the fall races in Cleveland.
As
for George Willard, he had many times wanted to ask about the hands.
At times an almost overwhelming curiosity had taken hold of him.
He felt that there must be a reason for their strange activity and
their inclination to keep hidden away and only a growing respect for Wing
Biddlebaum kept him from blurting out the questions that were often in his
mind.
Once
he had been on the point of asking. The
two were walking in the fields on a summer afternoon and had stopped to sit
upon a grassy bank. All
afternoon Wing Biddlebaum had talked as one inspired. By a fence he had
stopped and beating like a giant woodpecker upon the top board had shouted
at George Willard, condemning his tendency to be too much influenced by the
people about him, "You are destroying yourself," he cried. "You have the inclination to be alone and to dream and
you are afraid of dreams. You
want to be like others in town here. You hear them talk and you try to
imitate them."
On
the grassy bank Wing Biddlebaum had tried again to drive his point home.
His voice became soft and reminiscent, and with a sigh of contentment
he launched into a long rambling talk, speaking as one lost in a dream.
Out
of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a picture for George Willard.
In the picture men lived again in a kind of pastoral golden age.
Across a green open country came clean-limbed young men, some afoot,
some mounted upon horses. In
crowds the young men came to gather about the feet of an old man who sat
beneath a tree in a tiny garden and who talked to them.
Wing
Biddlebaum became wholly inspired. For
once he forgot the hands. Slowly
they stole forth and lay upon George Willard's shoulders. Something new and bold came into the voice that talked.
"You must try to forget all you have learned," said the old man.
"You must begin to dream. From
this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices."
Pausing
in his speech, Wing Biddlebaum looked long and earnestly at George Willard.
His eyes glowed. Again
he raised the hands to caress the boy and then a look of horror swept over
his face.
With
a convulsive movement of his body, Wing Biddlebaum sprang to his feet and
thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets.
Tears came to his eyes. "I
must be getting along home. I
can talk no more with you," he said nervously.
Without
looking back, the old man had hurried down the hillside and across a meadow,
leaving George Willard perplexed and frightened upon the grassy slope.
With a shiver of dread the boy arose and went along the road toward
town. "I'll not ask him
about his hands," he thought, touched by the memory of the terror he
had seen in the man's eyes. "There's something wrong, but I don't want
to know what it is. His hands
have something to do with his fear of me and of everyone."
And
George Willard was right. Let
us look briefly into the story of the hands.
Perhaps our talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell the
hidden wonder story of the influence for which the hands were but fluttering
pennants of promise.
In
his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a school teacher in a town in
Pennsylvania. He was not then
known as Wing Biddlebaum, but went by the less euphonic name of Adolph
Myers. As Adolph Myers he was much loved by the boys of his school.
Adolph
Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of youth. He was one of those rare, littleunderstood men who rule by a
power so gentle that it passes as a lovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under their charge such men are
not unlike the finer sort of women in their love of men.
And
yet that is but crudely stated. It
needs the poet there. With the
boys of his school, Adolph Myers had walked in the evening or had sat
talking until dusk upon the schoolhouse steps lost in a kind of dream. Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders of the
boys, playing about the tousled heads.
As he talked his voice became soft and musical.
There was a caress in that also.
In a way the voice and the hands, the stroking of the shoulders and
the touching of the hair were a part of the schoolmaster's effort to carry a
dream into the young minds. By
the caress that was in his fingers he expressed himself.
He was one of those men in whom the force that creates life is
diffused, not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief
went out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream.
And
then the tragedy. A half-witted
boy of the school became enamored of the young master. In his bed at night he imagined unspeakable things and in the
morning went forth to tell his dreams as facts. Strange, hideous accusations
fell from his loosehung lips. Through
the Pennsylvania town went a shiver. Hidden,
shadowy doubts that had been in men's minds concerning Adolph Myers were
galvanized into beliefs.
The
tragedy did not linger. Trembling
lads were jerked out of bed and questioned.
"He put his arms about me," said one.
"His fingers were always playing in my hair," said another.
One
afternoon a man of the town, Henry Bradford, who kept a saloon, came to the
schoolhouse door. Calling
Adolph Myers into the school yard he began to beat him with his fists.
As his hard knuckles beat down into the frightened face of the
schoolmaster, his wrath became more and more terrible. Screaming with
dismay, the children ran here and there like disturbed insects.
"I'll teach you to put your hands on my boy, you beast,"
roared the saloon keeper, who, tired of beating the master, had begun to
kick him about the yard.
Adolph
Myers was driven from the Pennsylvania town in the night.
With lanterns in their hands a dozen men came to the door of the
house where he lived alone and commanded that he dress and come forth.
It was raining and one of the men had a rope in his hands.
They had intended to hang the schoolmaster, but something in his
figure, so small, white, and pitiful, touched their hearts and they let him
escape. As he ran away into the
darkness they repented of their weakness and ran after him, swearing and
throwing sticks and great balls of soft mud at the figure that screamed and
ran faster and faster into the darkness.
For
twenty years Adolph Myers had lived alone in Winesburg.
He was but forty but looked sixtyfive.
The name of Biddlebaum he got from a box of goods seen at a freight
station as he hurried through an eastern Ohio town.
He had an aunt in Winesburg, a black-toothed old woman who raised
chickens, and with her he lived until she died.
He had been ill for a year after the experience in Pennsylvania, and
after his recovery worked as a day laborer in the fields, going timidly
about and striving to conceal his hands.
Although he did not understand what had happened he felt that the
hands must be to blame. Again and again the fathers of the boys had talked of the
hands. "Keep your hands to
yourself," the saloon keeper had roared, dancing, with fury in the
schoolhouse yard.
Upon
the veranda of his house by the ravine, Wing Biddlebaum continued to walk up
and down until the sun had disappeared and the road beyond the field was
lost in the grey shadows. Going
into his house he cut slices of bread and spread honey upon them.
When the rumble of the evening train that took away the express cars
loaded with the day's harvest of berries had passed and restored the silence
of the summer night, he went again to walk upon the veranda.
In the darkness he could not see the hands and they became quiet.
Although he still hungered for the presence of the boy, who was the
medium through which he expressed his love of man, the hunger became again a
part of his loneliness and his waiting.
Lighting a lamp, Wing Biddlebaum washed the few dishes soiled by his
simple meal and, setting up a folding cot by the screen door that led to the
porch, prepared to undress for the night.
A few stray white bread crumbs lay on the cleanly washed floor by the
table; putting the lamp upon a low stool he began to pick up the crumbs,
carrying them to his mouth one by
one with unbelievable rapidity. In
the dense blotch of light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked like
a priest engaged in some service of his church.
The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light,
might well have been mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly
through decade after decade of his rosary.
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