Queer Winesburg Ohio Chap. 17.1
QUEER

From his seat on a box in the rough board shed that
stuck like a burr on the rear of Cowley & Son's store
in Winesburg, Elmer Cowley, the junior member of the
firm, could see through a dirty window into the
printshop of the Winesburg Eagle. Elmer was putting new
shoelaces in his shoes. They did not go in readily and
he had to take the shoes off. With the shoes in his
hand he sat looking at a large hole in the heel of one
of his stockings. Then looking quickly up he saw George
Willard, the only newspaper reporter in Winesburg,
standing at the back door of the Eagle printshop and
staring absentmindedly about. "Well, well, what next!"
exclaimed the young man with the shoes in his hand,
jumping to his feet and creeping away from the window.

A flush crept into Elmer Cowley's face and his hands
began to tremble. In Cowley & Son's store a Jewish
traveling salesman stood by the counter talking to his
father. He imagined the reporter could hear what was
being said and the thought made him furious. With one
of the shoes still held in his hand he stood in a
corner of the shed and stamped with a stockinged foot
upon the board floor.
Cowley & Son's store did not face the main street of
Winesburg. The front was on Maumee Street and beyond it
was Voight's wagon shop and a shed for the sheltering
of farmers' horses. Beside the store an alleyway ran
behind the main street stores and all day drays and
delivery wagons, intent on bringing in and taking out
goods, passed up and down. The store itself was
indescribable. Will Henderson once said of it that it
sold everything and nothing. In the window facing
Maumee Street stood a chunk of coal as large as an
apple barrel, to indicate that orders for coal were
taken, and beside the black mass of the coal stood
three combs of honey grown brown and dirty in their
wooden frames.

The honey had stood in the store window for six months.
It was for sale as were also the coat hangers, patent
suspender buttons, cans of roof paint, bottles of
rheumatism cure, and a substitute for coffee that
companioned the honey in its patient willingness to
serve the public.

Ebenezer Cowley, the man who stood in the store
listening to the eager patter of words that fell from
the lips of the traveling man, was tall and lean and
looked unwashed. On his scrawny neck was a large wen
partially covered by a grey beard. He wore a long
Prince Albert coat. The coat had been purchased to
serve as a wedding garment. Before he became a merchant
Ebenezer was a farmer and after his marriage he wore
the Prince Albert coat to church on Sundays and on
Saturday afternoons when he came into town to trade.
When he sold the farm to become a merchant he wore the
coat constantly. It had become brown with age and was
covered with grease spots, but in it Ebenezer always
felt dressed up and ready for the day in town.
As a merchant Ebenezer was not happily placed in life
and he had not been happily placed as a farmer. Still
he existed. His family, consisting of a daughter named
Mabel and the son, lived with him in rooms above the
store and it did not cost them much to live. His
troubles were not financial. His unhappiness as a
merchant lay in the fact that when a traveling man with
wares to be sold came in at the front door he was
afraid. Behind the counter he stood shaking his head.
He was afraid, first that he would stubbornly refuse to
buy and thus lose the opportunity to sell again; second
that he would not be stubborn enough and would in a
moment of weakness buy what could not be sold.

In the store on the morning when Elmer Cowley saw
George Willard standing and apparently listening at the
back door of the Eagle printshop, a situation had
arisen that always stirred the son's wrath. The
traveling man talked and Ebenezer listened, his whole
figure expressing uncertainty. "You see how quickly it
is done," said the traveling man, who had for sale a
small flat metal substitute for collar buttons. With
one hand he quickly unfastened a collar from his shirt
and then fastened it on again. He assumed a flattering
wheedling tone. "I tell you what, men have come to the
end of all this fooling with collar buttons and you are
the man to make money out of the change that is coming.
I am offering you the exclusive agency for this town.
Take twenty dozen of these fasteners and I'll not visit
any other store. I'll leave the field to you."
The traveling man leaned over the counter and tapped
with his finger on Ebenezer's breast. "It's an
opportunity and I want you to take it," he urged. "A
friend of mine told me about you. 'See that man
Cowley,' he said. 'He's a live one.'"

The traveling man paused and waited. Taking a book
from his pocket he began writing out the order. Still
holding the shoe in his hand Elmer Cowley went through
the store, past the two absorbed men, to a glass
showcase near the front door. He took a cheap revolver
from the case and began to wave it about. "You get out
of here!" he shrieked. "We don't want any collar
fasteners here." An idea came to him. "Mind, I'm not
making any threat," he added. "I don't say I'll shoot.
Maybe I just took this gun out of the case to look at
it. But you better get out. Yes sir, I'll say that. You
better grab up your things and get out."

The young storekeeper's voice rose to a scream and
going behind the counter he began to advance upon the
two men. "We're through being fools here!" he cried.
"We ain't going to buy any more stuff until we begin to
sell. We ain't going to keep on being queer and have
folks staring and listening. You get out of here!"

The traveling man left. Raking the samples of collar
fasteners off the counter into a black leather bag, he
ran. He was a small man and very bow-legged and he ran
awkwardly. The black bag caught against the door and he
stumbled and fell. "Crazy, that's what he is--crazy!"
he sputtered as he arose from the sidewalk and hurried
away.

In the store Elmer Cowley and his father stared at each
other. Now that the immediate object of his wrath had
fled, the younger man was embarrassed. "Well, I meant
it. I think we've been queer long enough," he declared,
going to the showcase and replacing the revolver.
Sitting on a barrel he pulled on and fastened the shoe
he had been holding in his hand. He was waiting for
some word of understanding from his father but when
Ebenezer spoke his words only served to reawaken the
wrath in the son and the young man ran out of the store
without replying. Scratching his grey beard with his
long dirty fingers, the merchant looked at his son with
the same wavering uncertain stare with which he had
confronted the traveling man. "I'll be starched," he
said softly. "Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and
starched!"

Elmer Cowley went out of Winesburg and along a country
road that paralleled the railroad track. He did not
know where he was going or what he was going to do. In
the shelter of a deep cut where the road, after turning
sharply to the right, dipped under the tracks he
stopped and the passion that had been the cause of his
outburst in the store began to again find expression.
"I will not be queer--one to be looked at and listened
to," he declared aloud. "I'll be like other people.
I'll show that George Willard. He'll find out. I'll
show him!"

The distraught young man stood in the middle of the
road and glared back at the town. He did not know the
reporter George Willard and had no special feeling
concerning the tall boy who ran about town gathering
the town news. The reporter had merely come, by his
presence in the office and in the printshop of the
Winesburg Eagle, to stand for something in the young
merchant's mind. He thought the boy who passed and
repassed Cowley & Son's store and who stopped to talk
to people in the street must be thinking of him and
perhaps laughing at him. George Willard, he felt,
belonged to the town, typified the town, represented in
his person the spirit of the town. Elmer Cowley could
not have believed that George Willard had also his days
of unhappiness, that vague hungers and secret unnamable
desires visited also his mind. Did he not represent
public opinion and had not the public opinion of
Winesburg condemned the Cowleys to queerness? Did he
not walk whistling and laughing through Main Street?
Might not one by striking his person strike also the
greater enemy--the thing that smiled and went its own
way--the judgment of Winesburg?

Elmer Cowley was extraordinarily tall and his arms were
long and powerful. His hair, his eyebrows, and the
downy beard that had begun to grow upon his chin, were
pale almost to whiteness. His teeth protruded from
between his lips and his eyes were blue with the
colorless blueness of the marbles called "aggies" that
the boys of Winesburg carried in their pockets. Elmer
had lived in Winesburg for a year and had made no
friends. He was, he felt, one condemned to go through
life without friends and he hated the thought.

Sullenly the tall young man tramped along the road with
his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. The day was
cold with a raw wind, but presently the sun began to
shine and the road became soft and muddy. The tops of
the ridges of frozen mud that formed the road began to
melt and the mud clung to Elmer's shoes. His feet
became cold. When he had gone several miles he turned
off the road, crossed a field and entered a wood. In
the wood he gathered sticks to build a fire, by which
he sat trying to warm himself, miserable in body and in
mind.

For two hours he sat on the log by the fire and then,
arising and creeping cautiously through a mass of
underbrush, he went to a fence and looked across fields
to a small farmhouse surrounded by low sheds. A smile
came to his lips and he began making motions with his
long arms to a man who was husking corn in one of the
fields.

In his hour of misery the young merchant had returned
to the farm where he had lived through boyhood and
where there was another human being to whom he felt he
could explain himself. The man on the farm was a
half-witted old fellow named Mook. He had once been
employed by Ebenezer Cowley and had stayed on the farm
when it was sold. The old man lived in one of the
unpainted sheds back of the farmhouse and puttered
about all day in the fields.

Mook the half-wit lived happily. With childlike faith
he believed in the intelligence of the animals that
lived in the sheds with him, and when he was lonely
held long conversations with the cows, the pigs, and
even with the chickens that ran about the barnyard. He
it was who had put the expression regarding being
"laundered" into the mouth of his former employer. When
excited or surprised by anything he smiled vaguely and
muttered: "I'll be washed and ironed. Well, well, I'll
be washed and ironed and starched."

When the half-witted old man left his husking of corn
and came into the wood to meet Elmer Cowley, he was
neither surprised nor especially interested in the
sudden appearance of the young man. His feet also were
cold and he sat on the log by the fire, grateful for
the warmth and apparently indifferent to what Elmer had
to say.

Elmer talked earnestly and with great freedom, walking
up and down and waving his arms about. "You don't
understand what's the matter with me so of course you
don't care," he declared. "With me it's different. Look
how it has always been with me. Father is queer and
mother was queer, too. Even the clothes mother used to
wear were not like other people's clothes, and look at
that coat in which father goes about there in town,
thinking he's dressed up, too. Why don't he get a new
one? It wouldn't cost much. I'll tell you why. Father
doesn't know and when mother was alive she didn't know
either. Mabel is different. She knows but she won't say
anything. I will, though. I'm not going to be stared at
any longer. Why look here, Mook, father doesn't know
that his store there in town is just a queer jumble,
that he'll never sell the stuff he buys. He knows
nothing about it. Sometimes he's a little worried that
trade doesn't come and then he goes and buys something
else. In the evenings he sits by the fire upstairs and
says trade will come after a while. He isn't worried.
He's queer. He doesn't know enough to be worried."

The excited young man became more excited. "He don't
know but I know," he shouted, stopping to gaze down
into the dumb, unresponsive face of the half-wit. "I
know too well. I can't stand it. When we lived out here
it was different. I worked and at night I went to bed
and slept. I wasn't always seeing people and thinking
as I am now. In the evening, there in town, I go to the
post office or to the depot to see the train come in,
and no one says anything to me. Everyone stands around
and laughs and they talk but they say nothing to me.
Then I feel so queer that I can't talk either. I go
away. I don't say anything. I can't."

The fury of the young man became uncontrollable. "I
won't stand it," he yelled, looking up at the bare
branches of the trees. "I'm not made to stand it."

Maddened by the dull face of the man on the log by the
fire, Elmer turned and glared at him as he had glared
back along the road at the town of Winesburg. "Go on
back to work," he screamed. "What good does it do me to
talk to you?" A thought came to him and his voice
dropped. "I'm a coward too, eh?" he muttered. "Do you
know why I came clear out here afoot? I had to tell
someone and you were the only one I could tell. I
hunted out another queer one, you see. I ran away,
that's what I did. I couldn't stand up to someone like
that George Willard. I had to come to you. I ought to
tell him and I will."

Again his voice arose to a shout and his arms flew
about. "I will tell him. I won't be queer. I don't care
what they think. I won't stand it."

Elmer Cowley ran out of the woods leaving the half-wit
sitting on the log before the fire. Presently the old
man arose and climbing over the fence went back to his
work in the corn. "I'll be washed and ironed and
starched," he declared. "Well, well, I'll be washed and
ironed." Mook was interested. He went along a lane to a
field where two cows stood nibbling at a straw stack.
"Elmer was here," he said to the cows. "Elmer is crazy.
You better get behind the stack where he don't see you.
He'll hurt someone yet, Elmer will."

At eight o'clock that evening Elmer Cowley put his head
in at the front door of the office of the Winesburg
Eagle where George Willard sat writing. His cap was
pulled down over his eyes and a sullen determined look
was on his face. "You come on outside with me," he
said, stepping in and closing the door. He kept his
hand on the knob as though prepared to resist anyone
else coming in. "You just come along outside. I want to
see you."

George Willard and Elmer Cowley walked through the main
street of Winesburg. The night was cold and George
Willard had on a new overcoat and looked very spruce
and dressed up. He thrust his hands into the overcoat
pockets and looked inquiringly at his companion. He had
long been wanting to make friends with the young
merchant and find out what was in his mind. Now he
thought he saw a chance and was delighted. "I wonder
what he's up to? Perhaps he thinks he has a piece of
news for the paper. It can't be a fire because I
haven't heard the fire bell and there isn't anyone
running," he thought.

In the main street of Winesburg, on the cold November
evening, but few citizens appeared and these hurried
along bent on getting to the stove at the back of some
store. The windows of the stores were frosted and the
wind rattled the tin sign that hung over the entrance
to the stairway leading to Doctor Welling's office.
Before Hern's Grocery a basket of apples and a rack
filled with new brooms stood on the sidewalk. Elmer
Cowley stopped and stood facing George Willard. He
tried to talk and his arms began to pump up and down.
His face worked spasmodically. He seemed about to
shout. "Oh, you go on back," he cried. "Don't stay out
here with me. I ain't got anything to tell you. I don't
want to see you at all."

For three hours the distracted young merchant wandered
through the resident streets of Winesburg blind with
anger, brought on by his failure to declare his
determination not to be queer. Bitterly the sense of
defeat settled upon him and he wanted to weep. After
the hours of futile sputtering at nothingness that had
occupied the afternoon and his failure in the presence
of the young reporter, he thought he could see no hope
of a future for himself.

And then a new idea dawned for him. In the darkness
that surrounded him he began to see a light. Going to
the now darkened store, where Cowley & Son had for over
a year waited vainly for trade to come, he crept
stealthily in and felt about in a barrel that stood by
the stove at the rear. In the barrel beneath shavings
lay a tin box containing Cowley & Son's cash. Every
evening Ebenezer Cowley put the box in the barrel when
he closed the store and went upstairs to bed. "They
wouldn't never think of a careless place like that," he
told himself, thinking of robbers.

Elmer took twenty dollars, two ten-dollar bills, from
the little roll containing perhaps four hundred
dollars, the cash left from the sale of the farm. Then
replacing the box beneath the shavings he went quietly
out at the front door and walked again in the streets.

The idea that he thought might put an end to all of his
unhappiness was very simple. "I will get out of here,
run away from home," he told himself. He knew that a
local freight train passed through Winesburg at
midnight and went on to Cleveland, where it arrived at
dawn. He would steal a ride on the local and when he
got to Cleveland would lose himself in the crowds
there. He would get work in some shop and become
friends with the other workmen and would be
indistinguishable. Then he could talk and laugh. He
would no longer be queer and would make friends. Life
would begin to have warmth and meaning for him as it
had for others.

The tall awkward young man, striding through the
streets, laughed at himself because he had been angry
and had been half afraid of George Willard. He decided
he would have his talk with the young reporter before
he left town, that he would tell him about things,
perhaps challenge him, challenge all of Winesburg
through him.

Aglow with new confidence Elmer went to the office of
the New Willard House and pounded on the door. A
sleep-eyed boy slept on a cot in the office. He
received no salary but was fed at the hotel table and
bore with pride the title of "night clerk." Before the
boy Elmer was bold, insistent. "You 'wake him up," he
commanded. "You tell him to come down by the depot. I
got to see him and I'm going away on the local. Tell
him to dress and come on down. I ain't got much time."

The midnight local had finished its work in Winesburg
and the trainsmen were coupling cars, swinging lanterns
and preparing to resume their flight east. George
Willard, rubbing his eyes and again wearing the new
overcoat, ran down to the station platform afire with
curiosity. "Well, here I am. What do you want? You've
got something to tell me, eh?" he said.

Elmer tried to explain. He wet his lips with his
tongue and looked at the train that had begun to groan
and get under way. "Well, you see," he began, and then
lost control of his tongue. "I'll be washed and ironed.
I'll be washed and ironed and starched," he muttered
half incoherently.

Elmer Cowley danced with fury beside the groaning train
in the darkness on the station platform. Lights leaped
into the air and bobbed up and down before his eyes.
Taking the two ten-dollar bills from his pocket he
thrust them into George Willard's hand. "Take them," he
cried. "I don't want them. Give them to father. I stole
them." With a snarl of rage he turned and his long arms
began to flay the air. Like one struggling for release
from hands that held him he struck out, hitting George
Willard blow after blow on the breast, the neck, the
mouth. The young reporter rolled over on the platform
half unconscious, stunned by the terrific force of the
blows. Springing aboard the passing train and running
over the tops of cars, Elmer sprang down to a flat car
and lying on his face looked back, trying to see the
fallen man in the darkness. Pride surged up in him. "I
showed him," he cried. "I guess I showed him. I ain't
so queer. I guess I showed him I ain't so queer."