Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

The Saddest Man-3

The stranger with the educated skin breathed a gentle sigh at the conclusion of Hennery's tale of the Deciding Vote and the Centre of Population, and then he said:

“I don't doubt Bud Peevy was a sad man. But there's sadder things than what happened to Bud Peevy. There's things that touches the heart closer.”

“Stranger,” said Ben Grevis, “you've said it! But Hennery, here, don't know anything about the heart bein' touched.”

Hennery McNabb seemed to enjoy the implication, rather than to resent it. Ben Grevis continued:

“A sadder thing than what happened to Bud Peevy is goin' on a good deal nearer home than Indianny.

“I ain't the kind of a feller that goes running to Indianny and to Kentucky and all over the known earth for examples of sadness, nor nothin' else. We got as good a country right here in Illinois as there is on top of the earth and I'm one that always sticks up for home folks and home industries. Hennery, here, ain't got any patriotism. And he ain't got any judgment. He don't know what's in front of him. But right here in our home county, not five miles from where we are, sets a case of sadness that is one of the saddest I ever seen or knowed about.

“Hennery, here, he don't know how sad it is, for he's got no finer feelin's. A free thinker like Hennery can't be expected to have no finer feelin's. And this case is a case of a woman.”

“A woman!” sighed the stranger. “If a woman is mixed up with it, it could have finer feelin's and sadness in it!” And a ripple of melancholy ran over him from head to foot.

This here woman (said Ben Grevis) lives over to Hickory Grove, in the woods, and everybody for miles around calls her Widder Watson.

Widder Watson, she has buried four or five husbands, and you can see her any day that it ain't rainin' settin' in the door of her little house, smokin' of her corn-cob pipe, and lookin' at their graves and speculatin' and wonderin'. I talked with her a good deal from time to time durin' the last three or four years, and the things she is speculatin' on is life and death, and them husbands she has buried, and children. But that ain't what makes her so sad. It's wishin' for somethin' that, it seems like, never can be, that is makin' her so sad.

She has got eighteen or twenty children, Widder Watson has, runnin' around them woods. Them woods is jist plumb full of her children. You wouldn't dare for to try to shoot a rabbit anywhere near them woods for fear of hittin' one.

And all them children has got the most beautiful and peculiar names, that Widder Watson got out of these here d**g-store almanacs. She's been a great reader all her life, Widder Watson has, but all her readin' has been done in these here almanacs. You know how many different kinds of almanacs there always are layin' around d**g-stores, I guess. Well, every two or three months Widder Watson goes to town and gets a new bale of them almanacs and then she sets and reads 'em. She goes to d**g-stores in towns as far as twelve or fifteen miles away to keep herself supplied.

She never cared much for readin' novels and story papers, she tells me. What she wants is somethin' that has got some true information in it, about the way the sun rises, and the tides in the oceans she has never saw, and when the eclipses is going to be, and different kinds of diseases new and old, and receipts for preserves and true stories about how this or that wonderful remedy come to be discovered. Mebby it was discovered by the Injuns in this country, or mebby it was discovered by them there Egyptians in the old country away back in King Pharaoh's time, and mebby she's got some of the same sort of yarbs and plants right there in her own woods. Well, Widder Watson, she likes that kind o' readin', and she knows all about the Seven Wonders of the World, and all the organs and ornaments inside the human carcass, and the kind o' pains they are likely to have and all about what will happen to you if the stars says this or that and how long the Mississippi River is and a lot of them old-time prophecies of signs and marvels what is to come to pass yet. You know about what the readin' is in them almanacs, mebby.

Widder Watson, she has got a natural likin' for fine words, jist the same as some has got a gift for hand-paintin' or playin' music or recitin' pieces of poetry or anything like that. And so it was quite natural, when her kids come along, she names 'em after the names in her favourite readin' matter. And she gets so she thinks more of the names of them kids than of nearly anything else. I ain't sayin' she thinks more of the names than she does of the kids, but she likes the names right next to the kids. Every time she had a baby she used to sit and think for weeks and weeks, so she tells me, for to get a good name for that baby, and select and select and select out of them almanacs.

Her oldest girl, that everybody calls Zody, is named Zodiac by rights. And then there's Carty, whose real name is Cartilege, and Anthy, whose full name is Anthrax, and so on. There's Peruna and Epidermis and Epidemic and Pisces.

I dunno as I can remember all them swell names. There's Perry, whose real name is Perihelion, and there's Whitsuntide and Tonsillitis and Opodeldoc and a lot more—I never could remember all them kids.

And there ain't goin' to be no more on 'em, for the fact of the matter seems to be that Widder Watson ain't likely to ever get another husband. It's been about four years since Jim Watson, her last one, died, and was buried in there amongst the hickory second-growth and hazel bushes, and since that day there ain't nobody come along that road a-courtin' Widder Watson. And that's what makes her sad. She can't understand it, never havin' been without a husband for so long before, and she sets and grieves and grieves and smokes her corn-cob pipe and speculates and grieves some more.

Now, don't you get no wrong idea about Widder Watson. She ain't so all-fired crazy about men. It ain't that. That ain't what makes her grieve. She is sad because she wants another baby to pin a name to.

For she has got the most lovely name out of a new almanac for that there kid that will likely never be born, and she sets there day after day, and far into the night, lookin' at them graves in the brush, and talkin' to the clouds and stars, and sayin' that name over and over to herself, and sighin' and weepin' because that lovely name will be lost and unknown and wasted forevermore, with no kid to tack it on to.

And she hopes and yearns and grieves for another man to marry her and wonders why none of 'em never does. Well, I can see why they don't. The truth is, Widder Watson don't fix herself up much any more. She goes barefooted most of the time in warm weather, and since she got so sad-like she don't comb her hair much. And them corn-cob pipes of hern ain't none too savory. But I 'spose she thinks of herself as bein' jist the same way she was the last time she took the trouble to look into the lookin' glass and she can't understand it.

“Damn the men, Ben,” she says to me, the last time I was by there, “what's the matter with 'em all? Ain't they got no sense any more? I never had no trouble ketchin' a man before this! But here I been settin' for three or four years, with eighty acres of good land acrost the road there, and a whole passel o' young uns to work it, and no man comes to court me. There was a feller along here two-three months ago I did have some hopes on. He come a-palaverin' and a-blarneyin' along, and he stayed to dinner and I made him some apple dumplin's, and he et an' et and palavered.

“But it turned out he was really makin' up to that gal, Zody, of mine. It made me so darned mad, Ben, I runned him off the place with Jeff Parker's shotgun that is hangin' in there, and then I took a hickory sprout to that there Zody and tanned her good, for encouragin' of him. You remember Jeff Parker, Ben? He was my second. You wasn't thinkin' of gettin' married ag'in yourself, was you, Ben?”

I told her I wasn't. That there eighty acres is good land, and they ain't no mortgages on it, nor nothin', but the thought of bein' added to that collection in amongst the hazel brush and hickory sprouts is enough for to hold a man back. And the Widder Watson, she don't seem to realize she orter fix herself up a little mite. But I'm sorry for her, jist the same. There she sets and mourns, sayin' that name over and over to herself, and a-grievin' and a-hopin', and all the time she knows it ain't much use to hope. And a sadder sight than you will see over there to Hickory Grove ain't to be found in the whole of the State of Illinois.

“That is a mighty sad picture you have drawed,” said the stranger, when Ben Grevis had finished, “but I'm a sadder man for a man than that there woman is for a woman.”

He wrinkled all over, he almost grinned, if one could think of him as grinning, when he mentioned “that there woman.” It was as if he tasted some ulterior jest, and found it bitter, in connection with “that there woman.” After a pause, in which he sighed several times, he remarked in his tired and gentle voice:

“There's two kinds of sadness, gentlemen. There is the melancholy sadness that has been with you for so long that you have got used to it and kind o' enjoy it in a way. And then there's the kind o' sadness where you go back on yourself, where you make your own mistakes and fall below your own standards, and that is a mighty bitter kind of sadness.”

He paused again, while the skin wreathed itself into funeral wreaths about his face, and then he said, impressively:

“Both of them kinds of sadness I have known. First I knowed the melancholy kind, and now I know the bitter kind.”

The first sadness that I had lasted for years (said the stranger with the strange skin). It was of the melancholy kind, tender and sort o' sweet, and if I had been the right kind of a man I would 'a' stuck to it and kept it. But I went back on it. I turned my face away from it. And in going back on it I went back on all them old, sad, sweet memories, like the songs tell about, that was my better self. And that is what caused the sadness I am in the midst of now. It's the feelin' that I done wrong in turnin' away from all them memories that makes me as sad as you see me to-day. I will first tell you how the first sadness come on to me, and secondly I will tell you how I got the sadness I am in the midst of now.

Gentlemen, mebby you have noticed that my skin is kind o' different from most people's skin. That is a gift, and there was a time when I made money off'n that gift. And I got another gift. I'm longer and slimmer than most persons is. And besides them two gifts, I got a third gift. I can eat glass, gentlemen, and it don't hurt me none. I can eat glass as natural and easy as a chicken eats gravel. And them three gifts is my art.

I was an artist in a side-show for years, gentlemen, and connected with one of the biggest circuses in the world. I could have my choice of three jobs with any show I was with, and there ain't many could say that. I could be billed as the India Rubber Man, on account of my skin, or I could be billed as the Living Skeleton, on account of my framework, or I could be billed as the Glass Eater. And once or twice I was billed as all three.