Winesburg, Ohio: Hands

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.

The berry pickers, youths and maidens, laughed and shouted boisterously.

A boy clad in a blue shirt leaped from the wagon and attempted to drag after him one of the maidens, who screamed and protested shrilly.

Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by a ghostly band of doubts, did not think of himself as in any way a part of the life of the town where he had lived for twenty years.

With George Willard, son of Tom Willard, the proprietor of the New Willard House, he had formed something like a friendship.

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.

Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pausing in his speech, Wing Biddlebaum looked long and earnestly at George Willard.

With a convulsive movement of his body, Wing Biddlebaum sprang to his feet and thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets.

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.

And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the poet there.

Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders of the boys, playing about the tousled heads.

He was one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralized.

A half-witted boy of the school became enamored of the young master.

Hidden, shadowy doubts that had been in men's minds concerning Adolph Myers were galvanized into beliefs.

Screaming with dismay, the children ran here and there like disturbed insects.

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.