Hands - Page 2

ideas that had been accumulated by his mind during long
years of silence.

Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender
expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to
conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back,
came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery
of expression.

The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their
restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings
of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some
obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands
alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away
and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive
hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields,
or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.

When he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum
closed his fists and beat with them upon a table or on
the walls of his house. The action made him more
comfortable. If the desire to talk came to him when the
two were walking in the fields, he sought out a stump
or the top board of a fence and with his hands pounding
busily talked with renewed ease.

The story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is worth a book in
itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many
strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It is a
job for a poet. In Winesburg the hands had attracted
attention merely because of their activity. With them
Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and
forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They became his
distinguishing feature, the source of his fame. Also
they made more grotesque an already grotesque and
elusive individuality. Winesburg was proud of the hands
of Wing Biddlebaum in the same spirit in which it was
proud of Banker White's new stone house and Wesley
Moyer's bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the
two-fifteen trot at the fall races in Cleveland.

As for George Willard, he had many times wanted to ask
about the hands. At times an almost overwhelming
curiosity had taken hold of him. He felt that there
must be a reason for their strange activity and their
inclination to keep hidden away and only a growing
respect for Wing Biddlebaum kept him from blurting out
the questions that were often in his mind.

Once he had been on the point of asking. The two were
walking in the fields on a summer afternoon and had
stopped to sit upon a grassy bank. All afternoon Wing
Biddlebaum had talked as one inspired. By a fence he
had stopped and beating like a giant woodpecker upon
the top board had shouted at George Willard, condemning
his tendency to be too much influenced by the people
about him, "You are destroying yourself," he cried.
"You have the inclination to