RisQue' BBS 203-333-0493

 HANDS
 SHERWOOD ANDERSON

Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near 
the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man 
walked nervously up and down. Across a long field that had been seeded for 
clover but that had produced only a dense crop of yellow mustard weeks, he 
cold see the public highway along which went a wagon filled with berry 
pickers returning from the fields. The berry pickers, youths and maidens, 
laughed and shouted boisterously. A boy clad in blue shirt leaped from the 
wagon and attempted to drag after him one of the maidens, who screamed and 
protested shrilly. The feet of the boy in the road kicked up a cloud of 
dust that floated across the face of the departing sun. Over the long field 
came a thin girlish voice. "Oh, you Wing Bidlebaum, comb you hair, it's 
falling into your eyes," commanded the voice to the man, who was bald and 
whose nervous little hands fiddled about the bare white forehead as though 
arranging a mass of tangled locks.

Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by a ghostly band of 
doubts, did not think of himself as in any way part of the life of the town 
where he had lived for twenty years. Among all the people of Winesburg but 
one had come close to him. With George Willard, son of Tom Willard, the 
proprietor of the New Willard house, he had formed something like a 
friendship. George Willard was the reporter on the Winesburg Eagle and 
sometimes in the evenings he walked out along the highway to Wing 
Biddlebaum's house. now as the old man walked up and down on the veranda, 
his hands moving nervously about, he was hoping that George Willard would 
come and spend the evening with him. After the wagon containing the berry 
pickers had passed, he went across the field through the tall mustard weeks 
and climbing a rail fence peered anxiously along the road to the town. For 
a moment he stood thus, rubbing his hands together and looking up and down 
the road, and then, fear overcoming him, ran back to walk again upon the 
porch on his own house.

In the presence of George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum, who for twenty 
years had been the town mystery, lost something of his timidity, and his 
shadowy personality, submerged in a sea of doubts, came forth to look at 
the world. With the young reporter at his side, he ventured in the light of 
day into Main Street or strode up and down on the rickety front porch of 
his own house, talking excitedly. The voice that had been low and trembling 
became shrill and loud. The bent figure straightened. With a kind of 
wriggle, like a fish returned to the brook by the fisherman, Biddlebaum the 
silent began to talk, striving to put into words the ideas that had been 
accumulated by his mind during long years of silence.

Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive 
fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his 
pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his 
machinery of expression.

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 expressive 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 him 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 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 together 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."

Passing in his speach, 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 everyone."

And George Willard was right. Let us look briefly into the story of the 
hands. Perhaps on 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, little-under-stood 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. H 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 loose-hung 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 
t 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 to 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 sixty-five. 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 
i 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 you 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 gray 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 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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SHERWOOD ANDERSON (1876-1941) had written two novels before Winesburg, 
Ohio, in which the tale "Hands" appears, brought him sudden fame. This 
book, a collection of related stories about life in a small town, appealed 
t young people because of its theme of youth in revolt against 
respectability and the conventions of commercial society. Sherwood 
Anderson, who once had been a newspaper man and advertising copywriter, was 
an important influence on such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, 
and John Steinbeck.