Winesburg, Ohio
| 载入中... |
Along an alleyway he went and slipping in at the
back door of the saloon began drinking a drink made
of a combination of sloe gin and soda water. Will
Henderson was a sensualist and had reached the
age of forty-five. He imagined the gin renewed the
youth in him. Like most sensualists he enjoyed talk-
ing of women, and for an hour he lingered about
gossiping with Tom Willy. The saloon keeper was a
short, broad-shouldered man with peculiarly marked
hands. That flaming kind of birthmark that some-
times paints with red the faces of men and women
had touched with red Tom Willy's fingers and the
backs of his hands. As he stood by the bar talking
to Will Henderson he rubbed the hands together.
As he grew more and more excited the red of his
fingers deepened. It was as though the hands had
been dipped in blood that had dried and faded.
As Will Henderson stood at the bar looking at
the red hands and talking of women, his assistant,
George Willard, sat in the office of the Winesburg
Eagle and listened to the talk of Doctor Parcival.
Doctor Parcival appeared immediately after Will
Henderson had disappeared. One might have sup-
posed that the doctor had been watching from his
office window and had seen the editor going along
the alleyway. Coming in at the front door and find-
ing himself a chair, he lighted one of the stogies and
crossing his legs began to talk. He seemed intent
upon convincing the boy of the advisability of adopt-
ing a line of conduct that he was himself unable to
define.
"If you have your eyes open you will see that
although I call myself a doctor I have mighty few
patients," he began. "There is a reason for that. It
is not an accident and it is not because I do not
know as much of Medicine as anyone here. I do not
want patients. The reason, you see, does not appear
on the surface. It lies in fact in my character, which
has, if you think about it, many strange turns. Why
I want to talk to you of the matter I don't know. I
might keep still and get more credit in your eyes. I
have a desire to make you admire me, that's a fact.
I don't know why. That's why I talk. It's very amus-
ing, eh?"
Sometimes the doctor launched into long tales
concerning himself. To the boy the tales were very
real and full of meaning. He began to admire the fat
unclean-looking man and, in the afternoon when
Will Henderson had gone, looked forward with keen
interest to the doctor's coming.
Doctor Parcival had been in Winesburg about five
years. He came from Chicago and when he arrived
was drunk and got into a fight with Albert Long-
worth, the baggageman. The fight concerned a trunk
and ended by the doctor's being escorted to the vil-
lage lockup. When he was released he rented a room
above a shoe-repairing shop at the lower end of
Main Street and put out the sign that announced
himself as a doctor. Although he had but few pa-
tients and these of the poorer sort who were unable
to pay, he seemed to have plenty of money for his
needs. He slept in the office that was unspeakably
dirty and dined at Biff Carter's lunch room in a small
frame building opposite the railroad station. In the
summer the lunch room was filled with flies and Biff
Carter's white apron was more dirty than his floor.
Doctor Parcival did not mind. Into the lunch room
he stalked and deposited twenty cents upon the
counter. "Feed me what you wish for that," he said
laughing. "Use up food that you wouldn't otherwise
sell. It makes no difference to me. I am a man of
distinction, you see. Why should I concern myself
with what I eat."
The tales that Doctor Parcival told George Willard
began nowhere and ended nowhere. Sometimes the
boy thought they must all be inventions, a pack of
lies. And then again he was convinced that they
contained the very essence of truth.
"I was a reporter like you here," Doctor Parcival
began. "It was in a town in Iowa--or was it in Illi-
nois? I don't remember and anyway it makes no
difference. Perhaps I am trying to conceal my iden-
tity and don't want to be very definite. Have you
ever thought it strange that I have money for my
needs although I do nothing? I may have stolen a
great sum of money or been involved in a murder
before I came here. There is food for thought in that,
eh? If you were a really smart newspaper reporter
you would look me up. In Chicago there was a Doc-
tor Cronin who was murdered. Have you heard of
that? Some men murdered him and put him in a
trunk. In the early morning they hauled the trunk
across the city. It sat on the back of an express
wagon and they were on the seat
<< PrevPage [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] ... NextPage >>
推荐阅读
载入中...
相关阅读
No Correlative 小说