Triumph of the Egg, and Other Stories — John Shaqi
Triumph of the Egg, and Other StoriesAnderson, Sherwood
General
Triumph of the Egg, and Other Stories
Anderson, Sherwood
Ohio -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
And then, what do you suppose he did! He looked at the woman in there,
the one that was lean and hard-mouthed and looked a little like the
gelding Middlestride, but not clean like him, and his eyes began to
shine just as they did when he looked at me and at Sunstreak in the
paddocks at the track in the afternoon. I stood there by the window--
gee!--but I wished I hadn't gone away from the tracks, but had stayed
with the boys and the niggers and the horses. The tall rotten looking
woman was between us just as Sunstreak was in the paddocks in the
afternoon.
Then, all of a sudden, I began to hate that man. I wanted to scream and
rush in the room and kill him. I never had such a feeling before. I was
so mad clean through that I cried and my fists were doubled up so my
finger nails cut my hands.
And Jerry's eyes kept shining and he waved back and forth, and then he
went and kissed that woman and I crept away and went back to the tracks
and to bed and didn't sleep hardly any, and then next day I got the
other kids to start home with me and never told them anything I seen.
I been thinking about it ever since. I can't make it out. Spring has
come again and I'm nearly sixteen and go to the tracks mornings same as
always, and I see Sunstreak and Middlestride and a new colt named
Strident I'll bet will lay them all out, but no one thinks so but me
and two or three niggers.
But things are different. At the tracks the air don't taste as good or
smell as good. It's because a man like Jerry Tillford, who knows what
he does, could see a horse like Sunstreak run, and kiss a woman like
that the same day. I can't make it out. Darn him, what did he want to
do like that for? I keep thinking about it and it spoils looking at
horses and smelling things and hearing niggers laugh and everything.
Sometimes I'm so mad about it I want to fight someone. It gives me the
fantods. What did he do it for? I want to know why.
SEEDS
He was a small man with a beard and was very nervous. I remember how
the cords of his neck were drawn taut.
For years he had been trying to cure people of illness by the method
called psychoanalysis. The idea was the passion of his life. "I came
here because I am tired," he said dejectedly. "My body is not tired but
something inside me is old and worn-out. I want joy. For a few days or
weeks I would like to forget men and women and the influences that make
them the sick things they are."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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