Winesburg, Ohio
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orchards and the ground is hard with frost under-
foot. The apples have been taken from the trees by
the pickers. They have been put in barrels and
shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in
apartments that are filled with books, magazines,
furniture, and people. On the trees are only a few
gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They
look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One
nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little
round place at the side of the apple has been gath-
ered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree
over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted
apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the
few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.
The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship
on a summer afternoon. He was forty-five then and
already he had begun the practice of filling his pock-
ets with the scraps of paper that became hard balls
and were thrown away. The habit had been formed
as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded white horse
and went slowly along country roads. On the papers
were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings
of thoughts.
One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made
the thoughts. Out of many of them he formed a
truth that arose gigantic in his mind. The truth
clouded the world. It became terrible and then faded
away and the little thoughts began again.
The tall dark girl came to see Doctor Reefy because
she was in the family way and had become fright-
ened. She was in that condition because of a series
of circumstances also curious.
The death of her father and mother and the rich
acres of land that had come down to her had set a
train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw
suitors almost every evening. Except two they were
all alike. They talked to her of passion and there
was a strained eager quality in their voices and in
their eyes when they looked at her. The two who
were different were much unlike each other. One of
them, a slender young man with white hands, the
son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of
virginity. When he was with her he was never off
the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large
ears, said nothing at all but always managed to get
her into the darkness, where he began to kiss her.
For a time the tall dark girl thought she would
marry the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in silence
listening as he talked to her and then she began to
be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity
she began to think there was a lust greater than in
all the others. At times it seemed to her that as he
talked he was holding her body in his hands. She
imagined him turning it slowly about in the white
hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that
he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were
dripping. She had the dream three times, then she
became in the family way to the one who said noth-
ing at all but who in the moment of his passion
actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the
marks of his teeth showed.
After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy
it seemed to her that she never wanted to leave him
again. She went into his office one morning and
without her saying anything he seemed to know
what had happened to her.
In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the
wife of the man who kept the bookstore in Wines-
burg. Like all old-fashioned country practitioners,
Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the woman who
waited held a handkerchief to her teeth and groaned.
Her husband was with her and when the tooth was
taken out they both screamed and blood ran down
on the woman's white dress. The tall dark girl did
not pay any attention. When the woman and the
man had gone the doctor smiled. "I will take you
driving into the country with me," he said.
For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor
were together almost every day. The condition that
had brought her to him passed in an illness, but she
was like one who has discovered the sweetness of
the twisted apples, she could not get her mind fixed
again upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in
the city apartments. In the fall after the beginning
of her acquaintanceship with him she married Doc-
tor Reefy and in the following spring she died. Dur-
ing the winter he read to her all of the odds and
ends of thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of
paper. After he had read them he laughed and
stuffed them away in his pockets to become round
hard balls.
MOTHER
ELIZABETH WILLARD, the mother of George Willard,
was tall and gaunt and her face was marked with
smallpox scars. Although she was b
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