Death in the Woods

by Sherwood Anderson

She was an old woman and lived on a farm near the town where I came from. All country and small-town people have seen old women like her, but no-one knows much about them. They come into town riding worn-out horses or on foot, carrying baskets. They may have a few chickens and sell eggs to the grocer. They get some beans, sugar and some flour.

Afterwards they go to the butcher's and ask for some meat for their dogs. They may spend ten or fifteen cents, but they always ask for something free. In the old days, the butchers gave liver to anyone who wanted it. In our family we always had it. Once one of my brothers got a whole cow's liver and we ate it until we were sick of it. It never cost a cent. I have hated the thought of it ever since.

The old farm woman got some liver and a soup-bone. She never visited anyone and as soon as she got what she wanted, she headed home. The load was quite heavy for such an old body. No-one gave her a lift. People drive right down a road and never notice an old woman like that. Two or three large but very thin dogs followed her.

The old woman was nothing special. She was one of the nameless people that almost no-one knows but she got into my thoughts. I have just now, after all these years, remembered her again and what happened to her. Her name was Grimes, and she lived with her husband and son in a small unpainted house at the side of a lake outside town.

The husband, Jake, and their son were bad. Although the son was only twenty-one, he had already been in jail. It was whispered that the woman's husband stole horses and took them to some other town to sell them. Now and then, when a horse went missing, the man also disappeared. No-one ever caught him. Once, when I was sitting at Tom Whitehead's shop, the man came there and sat on the bench in front. Two or three other men were there, but no-one spoke to him. He sat for a few minutes and then got up and went away. When he was leaving he turned around and stared at the men. There was a look of hatred in his eyes.

"Well, I’ve tried to be friendly. You don't want to talk to me. It’s been just like this wherever I’ve gone in this town. If, some day, one of your fine horses goes missing, well, then what?"

"I'd like to hit you in the face," was what his eyes said. I remember how his look made me feel.

The old man belonged to a family that had money long ago. His name was Jake Grimes. His father, John Grimes, had owned a business when the country was new and had made money but then things went wrong for him. When he died there wasn't much left. Jake wasted the rest. Soon his land was nearly all gone.

He got his wife from a German farmer that he went to work for one day at harvest time. She was a young girl then and very afraid. You see, the farmer was quite friendly with the girl – she was, I think, a servant girl and his wife had suspicions. She hit and shouted at the girl when the man wasn't there. Then, when the wife had to go off to town for supplies, the farmer was friendly to her again. She told young Jake that it was all innocent, but he didn't know whether to believe it or not.

He wouldn't have married her if the German farmer hadn't been rude to him. The girl did not know where her father and mother were. Maybe she did not have a father, if you know what I mean. People often behaved cruelly to children like that. They were children who had no parents, slaves really. There were very few orphanages then and orphans were put in any home. It didn’t always go well.

She married Jake and had a son and daughter, but the daughter died. She fed the farm animals. That was her job. At the German's place she had cooked the food for the German and his wife. The wife was a strong woman and worked most of the time in the fields with her husband. The girl fed them and fed the cows, fed the horses and the chickens. Every moment of every day as a young girl was spent feeding something. Then she married Jake Grimes and he had to be fed. She was a slim girl and when she had been married for three or four years, and after the two children were born, her thin shoulders were no longer straight.

Jake always had a lot of big dogs around the house near the lake. He was always trading horses when he wasn't stealing something and had a lot of poor bony animals about. Also he kept three or four sheep and a cow. They were all in the few fields that were left of the Grimes place and Jake did almost no work. He borrowed money to buy a windmill and managed it for several years, but it did not pay. People did not trust him. They were afraid he would steal their grain at night. He had to go a long way to get work and it cost too much to get there. In the winter he hunted and cut a little firewood, to be sold in some nearby town.

When the son grew up he was just like the father. If there wasn't anything to eat in the house when they came home the old man gave his old woman a cut over the head. She had a few chickens of her own and had to kill one of them in a hurry. When they were all killed she wouldn't have any eggs to sell when she went to town, and then what would she do?

She had to make plans about getting things fed all her life, getting the sheep fed so they would grow fat and could be butchered in the fall. When they were butchered her husband took most of the meat to town and sold it. If he did not do it first, the boy did. They fought sometimes and when they fought the old woman stood shaking.

She had got into the habit of silence anyway – that was sure. Sometimes, when she began to look old – she wasn't forty yet – and when the husband and son were both away trading horses or hunting or stealing, she went around the house and the garden muttering to herself.

How was she going to get everything fed? That was her problem. The dogs had to be fed. There wasn't enough food for the horses and the cow. If she didn't feed the chickens how could they lay eggs? Without eggs to sell how could she get things in town, things she had to have to keep the farm going? Her husband hadn’t been at the farm much after their marriage and the babies came. Where he went on his long trips she did not know. Sometimes he was gone for weeks and, after the boy grew up, they went off together.

They left everything at home for her to manage and she had no money. She knew no-one. No-one ever talked to her in town. When it was winter she had to get wood for her fire, had to try to keep the animals fed with very little food.

The animals cried to her hungrily, the dogs followed her about. In the winter the hens laid very few eggs. They sat in the corners but she kept watching them. If a hen lays an egg in the winter and you do not find it, it freezes and breaks.

One day in winter the old woman went off to town with a few eggs and the dogs followed her. She did not get started until nearly three o'clock and the snow was heavy. She hadn't felt very well for days and so she went muttering along, dressed like it was spring. She had an old bag in which she carried her eggs. There weren't many of them, but in winter the price of eggs goes up. She would get a little meat for the eggs, a little sugar, and some coffee perhaps. The butcher might give her a piece of liver.

When she had got to town and was trading her eggs the dogs lay by the door outside. She did quite well and she got the things that she needed, more than she had hoped. Then she went to the butcher and he gave her some liver and some dog-meat. It was the first time anyone had spoken to her in a friendly way for a long time.

The butcher was alone in his shop when she came in and was annoyed that such a sick-looking old woman was out on that cold day when the snow was falling. The butcher said something about her husband and her son, swore at them, and the old woman stared at him, a look of surprise in her eyes as he talked. He said that he'd see her husband and son starve, rather than give them any of the liver or the heavy soup bone with bits of meat on it.

Starve, eh? Well, things had to be fed. Men had to be fed, and the horses that weren't any good but maybe could be sold, and the poor thin cow that hadn't given any milk for three months.

Horses, cows, sheep, dogs, men.

The old woman had to get back before darkness came if she could. The dogs followed her, smelling the heavy bag she had put on her back. Her arms ached. It was hard when she fell over and landed in the snow. She had to try hard to get to her feet again, but she made it. There was a short cut over a hill and through a wood. She might have gone around by the road, but it was farther that way. And then the animals had to be fed.

There was a little corn left. Perhaps her husband and son would bring some home when they came. They had driven off in the only cart the Grimes family had, a broken-down thing, a bony horse pulling it, two other bony horses following. They were going to trade horses, get a little money if they could. They might come home hungry. It would be good to have something in the house when they came back.

With the pack on her back she went painfully along across a field, walking in the deep snow, and got into the woods. There was a path, but it was hard to follow. Just after the top of the hill, where the wood was thickest, the old woman sat down to rest at a tree. It was a stupid thing to do. When she sat down, the pack against the tree, it was comfortable, but what about getting up again? She worried about that for a moment and then quietly closed her eyes. She must have slept for a time. When you are so cold, you can't get any colder. The afternoon grew a little warmer and the snow came thicker than ever. Then after a time the weather cleared. The moon came out.

There were four Grimes dogs that had followed Mrs. Grimes into town, all big, bony animals. Men like Jake Grimes and his son always keep dogs like those. They kick them, but they stay. The Grimes dogs, not to starve, had to do a lot of hunting for themselves, and they did so while the old woman slept with her back to the tree. They had been chasing rabbits in the woods and in the nearby fields.

The dogs in the clearing had caught two or three rabbits and their immediate hunger was gone. They began to play, running in circles. Round and round they ran, each dog's nose at the tail of the next dog. Under the snow-covered trees and the wintry moon they made a strange picture, running silently in a circle.

Maybe the old woman saw them doing that before she died. She may have woken up once or twice and looked at the strange sight with dim old eyes. She wouldn't be very cold now, just drowsy. Life hangs on a long time. She may have dreamed of her girlhood at the German's and, before that, when she was a child and her mother was with her. Her dreams couldn't have been very pleasant as not many pleasant things had happened to her.

Now and then one of the Grimes dogs left the running circle and came to stand in front of her. The dog pushed his face close to her face, seemed happy and went back to run with the others. All the Grimes dogs did the same thing at some time during the evening before she died.

The old woman died softly and quietly. When one of the Grimes dogs had come to her and found her dead all the dogs stopped running. They stood around her. Well, she was dead now. She had fed the Grimes dogs when she was alive, what about now?

There was the pack on her back, the bag containing the piece of beef, the liver the butcher had given her, the dog-meat, the soup bones. The butcher in town, suddenly feeling sorry for her, had loaded her bag heavily. It had been a big job for the old woman to carry it. It was a big job for the dogs now.

One of the Grimes dogs jumped suddenly out from the others and began moving the pack on the old woman's back. All of them ate from the bag the old woman had on her back. They pulled the old woman's body away from the tree. The worn-out dress was quickly torn from her shoulders. When she was found, a day or two later, the dress had been torn from her chest, but the dogs had not touched her body. They had got the meat out of the bag. That was all. Her body was frozen stiff when it was found, and the shoulders were so thin and the body so small that, in death, it looked like the body of a young girl.

Things like that happened in towns of the Middle West, on farms near town, when I was a boy. A hunter looking for rabbits found the old woman's body and did not touch it but hurried off to town.

I was in Main Street with one of my brothers who was taking the afternoon newspapers to the shops. It was almost night. The hunter came into a store and told his story. Men began to come in from the streets. Then they started along the road to the place in the woods.

Everyone was going to the woods. The undertaker went and the town butcher. Several men rode out but the horses fell about on the icy roads. They were no faster than those of us who walked. The town lawman’s leg had been injured in the Civil War. He carried a heavy stick and limped rapidly along the road. My brother and I followed him and as we went other men and boys joined the crowd.

It had grown dark by the time we got to where the old woman had left the road but the moon had come out. The lawman was thinking it might be murder. He kept asking the hunter questions. The hunter went along with his gun across his shoulders, a dog following him. It isn't often a rabbit hunter has a chance to be so important.

"I didn't see any injuries. She was a beautiful young girl. Her face was in the snow. No, I didn't know her."

As a matter of fact, the hunter had not looked closely at the body. He had been frightened. She might have been murdered and someone might jump out from behind a tree and murder him too. In a wood in the late afternoon, when the trees are bare and there is snow on the ground, when everything is silent, something frightening touches us. If something strange happens, all you think about is getting away from there as fast as you can.

The crowd of men and boys had got to where the old woman had crossed the field and went up the hill and into the woods. My brother and I were silent. He had his newspapers in a bag on his shoulder. When he got back to town he would have to deliver his papers before he went home to supper. If I went along, we would both be late. Either mother or our older sister would have to warm the food.

Well, we would have a story to tell. A boy did not get such a chance very often. It was lucky we just happened to be in the shop when the hunter came in.

Now the crowd of men and boys had arrived. Darkness comes quickly on such winter nights, but the full moon made everything clear. My brother and I stood near the tree where the old woman had died.

She did not look old, lying there in that light, frozen and still. One of the men turned her over in the snow and I saw everything. My body shook with some strange feeling and so did my brother's. It might have been the cold. Neither of us had ever seen a woman's body before. It may have been the snow on the frozen skin that made it look so white and lovely. No woman had come with us from town but one of the men took off his coat and covered her. Then he picked her up and started off to town, all the others following silently. At that time no-one knew who she was.

I had seen everything, had seen the circle in the snow where the dogs had run, had seen the white bare young-looking shoulders, had heard the whispers of the men. They were shocked. They took the body to the undertaker's, and when the baker, the hunter, the lawman and several others had got inside they closed the door. If father had been there perhaps he could have got in, but we boys couldn't. I went with my brother to deliver the rest of his papers and when we got home it was my brother who told the story. I kept silent and went to bed early.

Later, in the town, I heard other parts of the old woman's story. There was an investigation. The husband and son were found somewhere and brought to town. They tried to link them with the woman's death, but it did not work. They had perfect alibis. However, the town was against them and they had to get out. Where they went I never heard.

I remember only the picture there in the forest, the men standing about, the girlish-looking figure, face down in the snow, the circle made by the running dogs and the clear cold winter sky above. The scene in the forest became for me, without my knowing it, the real story I am now trying to tell. I had to learn the different parts slowly, you see, long afterwards.

The whole thing, the story of the old woman's death, was to me as I grew older like music heard from far away. Something that had to be understood.

The woman who died was born to feed animals. Anyway, that is all she ever did. She was feeding animals before she was born, as a child, as a young woman working on the German’s farm, after she married, when she grew old and when she died. She fed cows, chickens, sheep, horses, dogs, men. Her daughter had died in childhood and with her only son there was no real feeling. On the night she died she was hurrying home, carrying food for animals. She died in the woods and even after her death continued feeding.

A thing so complete has its own beauty.