Anderson is drawing attention to the storyteller. This is one of several instances in which he tells a bit of a side story and then says that he is not telling that person's story. be necessary to talk a little of young Hal so that you will get into the spirit of it" (204). As he walks home, Ray has a pleasant memory of evenings spent with his children, and he realizes that whatever he had planned to tell Hal would have been a lie.Īfter telling the interesting tale of how Hal's father, Windpeter, died, Anderson writes: "But this is not the story of Windpeter Winters nor yet of his son Hal" but "It will. Nell has not asked him to marry her, but he is ready to be married. Hal laughs, knowing what Ray was going to say, and tells him that he wants to marry Nell and have a family. When he catches up with Hal, he cannot say what he came to say. He runs after Hal, intending to tell the young man not to get tied down in a marriage. Later, after returning to his shrewish wife, Ray wants to help the other man avoid his fate.
He cannot bring himself to say what he knows he should say.
One day in October, when they are working together in a field, Hal asks Ray what he ought to do. His colleague, Hal Winters, is a young, boisterous man who has gotten his girlfriend pregnant. He is married to a shrewish woman whom he had to marry after he got her pregnant many years ago.
Ray Pearson, an older farmhand, is a quiet man.
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