The Web and the Root

by Thomas Wolfe

  “Is he dead? Is he dead? Why don’t you tell me if he’s dead?”

  Then suddenly she stopped screaming when they told her that it was not Albert but Johnny who was dead—grew calm, silent, almost tranquil, because Albert was her own child, and Johnny was an adopted child; and although she had always been good to Johnny, all the people in the neighborhood said later:

  “You see, don’t you? It only goes to show you! You saw how quick she shut up when she heard it wasn’t her own flesh and blood.”

  But Albert died anyway two hours later at the hospital.

  Finally—and somehow this was the worst of all—Mr. Andrews came tottering towards the people as they gathered around Albert. He was an insurance salesman, a little scrap of a man who was wasting away with some horrible joint disease. He was so feeble that he could not walk save by tottering along on a cane, and his great staring eyes and sunken face and large head, that seemed too heavy for the scrawny neck and body that supported it, went waggling, goggling, jerking about from side to side with every step he took, and his legs made sudden and convulsive movements as if they were going to fly away beneath him as he walked. Yet this ruin of a man had gotten nine children, and was getting new ones all the time. Monk had talked about this with the other boys in lowered voices, and with a feeling of horror and curiosity, for he wondered if his physical collapse had not come somehow from all the children he had got, if some criminal excess in nature had not sapped and gutted him and made his limbs fly out below him with these movements of convulsive disintegration; and he felt a terrible fascination and revulsion of the spirit because of the seminal mystery of nature that could draw forth life in swarming hordes from the withered loins of a walking dead man such as this.

  But finally he had come around the corner, goggling, waggling, jerking onward with his huge, vacant, staring eyes, towards the bloody place where two of his children had been killed; and this, together with the strong congruent smells of rubber, leather, oil and gasoline, mixed with the heavy, glutinous sweetness of warm blood, and hanging there like a cloud in the cool, wet, earthy air of that grey-green day that just a moment before had impended with such a wordless and intolerable prescience of joy, and now was filled with horror, nausea, and desperate sickness of the soul—this finally was the memory that was to fix that corner, the hour, the day, the time, the words and faces of the people, with a feeling of the huge and nameless death that waits around the corner for all men, to break their backs and shatter instantly the blind and pitiful illusions of their hope,

  HERE WAS THE place, just up the hill a little way from this treacherous corner, right there in front of Shepperton’s house, where another accident occurred, as absurd and comic as the first was tragic and horrible.

  One morning about seven o’clock, in the Spring of the year when all the fruit trees were in blossom, George was awakened instantly as he lay in his room, with a vision of cherry blossoms floating slowly to the earth, and at the same time with the memory of a terrific collision—a savage grinding and splintering of glass, steel, and wood—still ringing in his ears. Already he could hear people shouting to one another in the street, and the sound of footsteps running. The screen door slammed in his uncle’s house next door, and the boy heard his Uncle Mark howl to someone in an excited tone:

  “It’s down here on Locust Street! Merciful God, they’ll all be killed!”

  And he was off, striding down the street.

  But already George was out of bed, had his trousers on, and, without stopping for stockings, shoes, or shirt, he went running onto the porch, down the steps, and out into the street as hard as he could go. People were running along in the same direction, and he could see his uncle’s figure in the rapidly growing crowd gathered in front of Shepperton’s about a big telephone post which had been snapped off like a match stick near the base and hung half-suspended from the wires.

  As he pounded up, the fragments of the car were strewn over the pavement for a distance of fifty yards—a wheel here, a rod there, a lamp, a leather seat at other places, and shattered glass everywhere. The battered and twisted wreckage of the car’s body rested solidly and squatly upon the street before the telephone post which it had snapped with its terrific impact, and in the middle of all this wreckage Lon Pilcher was solemnly sitting, with a stupid look upon his face and the rim of the steering wheel wrapped around his neck. A few feet away, across the sidewalk, and upon the high-banked lawn of the Shepperton house, Mr. Matthews, the fat, red-faced policeman, was sitting squarely on his solid bottom, legs thrust out before him, and with the same look of stupid and solemn surprise on his face that Lon Pilcher had.

  Uncle Mark and some other men pulled Lon Pilcher from the wreckage of his car, took the steering wheel from around his neck, and assured themselves that by some miracle of chance he was not hurt. Lon, recovering quickly from the collision which had stunned him, now began to peer owlishly about at the strewn remnants of his car, and finally, turning to Uncle Mark with a drunken leer, he said:

  “D’ye think it’s damaged much, Mr. Joyner? D’ye think we can fix her up again, so she will run?” Here he belched heavily, covered his mouth with his hand, and said, “Excuse me,” and began to prowl drunkenly among the strewn fragments.

  Meanwhile Mr. Matthews, recovering from his shock, now clambered down clumsily from the bank and pounded heavily towards Lon, shouting:

  “I’ll arrest ye! I’ll arrest ye! I’ll take ye to the lockup and arrest ye, that’s what I’ll do!”—a threat which now seemed somewhat superfluous since he had arrested Lon some time before.

  It now developed that Lon had been cruising about the town all night with some drunken chorus girls in his celebrated Cadillac, model 1910; that the policeman had arrested him at the head of the Locust Street hill, and had commanded Lon to drive him to the police station; and then, during that terrific dash downhill which had ended in the smash-up near the corner, had screamed frantically at his driver:

  “Stop! Stop! Let me out! You’re under arrest! Damn you, I’ll arrest ye fer this, as sure as you’re born!”

  And, according to witnesses, at the moment of collision the fat policeman had sailed gracefully through the shining morning air, described two somersaults, and landed solidly and squarely upon his bottom, with such force that he was stunned for several minutes, but still kept muttering all the time:

  “Stop! Stop! Or I’ll arrest ye!”

  HERE WAS THE house, across the street from Shepperton’s and just above Nebraska Crane’s house, where Captain Suggs lived. He was a cripple, with both legs amputated far above the knee. The rest of him was a gigantic hulk, with enormous shoulders, powerful, thick hands, and a look of brutal power and determination about his great, thick neck and his broad, clean-shaven, cruel-lipped mouth. He got about on crutches when he had his wooden stumps on him; at other times he crawled about on the stump ends of his amputated legs, which were protected by worn leather pads. He had had one leg shot off at Cold Harbor, and the other was mangled and had to be amputated. In spite of his mutilation and his huge bulk, he could move with amazing speed when he wanted to. When he was angered, he could use his crutch as a club and could floor anyone within a radius of six feet. His wife, a little, frail woman, was thoroughly submissive.

  His son, “Fielder” Suggs, was a little past thirty and on his way to fortune. At one time in his career he had been a professional baseball player. Later, with money enough for one month’s rent, Fielder leased a vacant store and installed there the first moving picture projection camera the town had known. Now he owned the Princess and the Gaiety on the Square, and his career was a miracle of sudden wealth.

  HERE WAS THE place upon the street before McPherson’s house where the horse slipped and fell on the icy pavement one cold night in January, and broke its leg. There were dark faces of men around the house, and presently George heard two shots, and his Uncle Mark came back with a sad look on his face, shaking his head regretfully and muttering, “What a pity! W
hat a pity!”—and then began to denounce the city government bitterly for making the pavements so slippery and the hill so steep. And light and warmth went from the boy’s life, and the terror of the dark was all about him.

  HERE WAS THE alleyway that ran past his uncle’s house on the lower side and was bordered by a lane of lonely pines, and there was the huge, clay-caked stump of a tree where the boys would go Christmas morning and on the Fourth of July to explode their firecrackers on the stump. Rufus Higginson, who was Harry’s older brother, came there one Fourth of July with a toy cannon and a large yellow paper bag filled with loose powder, and he threw a match away into the powder bag, and even as he bent to get more powder it exploded in his face. He rushed screaming like a madman down the alley, his face black as a negro’s and his eyes blinded, and he rushed through his house from room to room, and no one could quiet him or get him to stop running because the pain was so intense. The doctor came and picked the powder out, and for weeks he bathed his face in oil; and his face turned into one solid scab, which then peeled off and left no scar at all, when everyone said he “would be scarred for life.”

  ON UP THE hill past his uncle’s new, brick house, and beside it, and to the rear, the little frame house which his grandfather had built more than forty years before and where George now lived with his Aunt Maw; on up the hill past Pennock’s house and Higginson’s old house; on up past Mr. McPherson’s house across the street, which always looked new and clean and tidy, and bright with new paint; on up to the top of the hill where Locust Street came into Charles, and on the left hand, was the huge, old, gabled house of brown, with its great porches, parlors, halls of quartered oak, and carriage entrances, and the enormous, lordly oaks in front of it. Some wealthy people from South Carolina lived there. They had a negro driver and a carriage that came up the driveway for them every day, and they never spoke to the other people on the street because they were too fine for them and moved in higher circles.

  Across Charles Street, on the corner, was a brick house in which a woman lived with her aged mother. The woman was a good soul, with fluffy, sandy-reddish hair, a hooked nose, a red face, and teeth that stuck out. Everyone called her “Pretty Polly” because she looked like a parrot and had a parrot’s throaty voice. She played the piano for the moving picture shows at the Gaiety Theatre, and every night when she stopped playing the people in the audience would cry out:

  “Music, Polly, music! Please, Polly, music, Polly! Pretty Polly, please!”

  She never seemed to mind at all, and would play again.

  “Pretty Polly” had a beau named James Mears, better known as “Duke” Mears, because he was always smartly dressed in correct riding costume, or at least what he believed to be the correct riding costume of the English aristocracy. He wore a derby hat, a stock, a fawn-colored weskit with the last and lowest button nonchalantly left unbuttoned, a close-fitting checked riding coat, riding trousers and magnificent, shining riding boots and spurs, and he carried a riding crop. He always wore this costume. He wore it when he got up in the morning, he wore it when he walked across the Square, he wore it when he went down the main street of the town, he wore it when he got into a street car, he wore it when he went to Miller and Cashman’s livery stable.

  Duke Mears had never been on a horse in his life, but he knew more about horses than anyone else. He talked to them and loved them better than he loved people. George saw him one Winter night at the fire which burned down the livery stable, and he yelled like a madman when he heard the horses screaming in the fire; they had to hold him and throw him to the ground and sit on him to keep him from going in to get the horses. Next day the boy went by and the stable was a mass of smoking timbers, and he could smell the wet, blackened embers, caked with ice, and the acrid smell of the put-out fire, and the sickening smell of roasted horse flesh. Teams were dragging the dead horses out with chains, and one dead horse had burst in two across the belly and its blue roasted entrails had come bulging out with a hideous stench he could not blow out of his nostrils.

  ON THE OTHER corner of Locust Street and Charles, facing the house where “Pretty Polly” lived, was the Leathergood house; and farther along Charles Street, up the hill in the direction of the Country Club, was Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper’s boarding house.

  Everyone knew Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper. No one had ever seen or heard of Mr. Charles Montgomery Hopper. No one knew where he came from, no one knew where she got him, no one knew where they had lived together, no one knew who he was, or where he lived and died and was buried. It may very well be that he did not exist, that he never existed at all. Nevertheless, by the vociferous use of this imposing and resounding name, year after year, in a loud, aggressive, and somewhat raucous voice, Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper had convinced everyone, bludgeoned, touted everyone into the unquestioning acceptance of the fact that the name of Charles Montgomery Hopper was a very distinguished one, and that Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper was a very distinguished person.

  In spite of the fact that she ran a boarding house, it was never referred to as a boarding house. If one telephoned and asked if this was Mrs. Hopper’s boarding house, one of two things was likely to happen if Mrs. Hopper was the one who answered. The luckless questioner would either have the receiver slammed up violently in his face, after having his ears blistered by the scathing invective of which Mrs. Hopper was the complete mistress; or he would be informed, in tones that dripped with acid, that it was not Mrs. Hopper’s boarding house, that Mrs. Hopper did not have a boarding house, that it was Mrs. Hopper’s residence—then, also, he would have the receiver slammed up in his face.

  None of the boarders ever dared to refer to the fact that the lady had a boarding house, and that they paid her money for their board. Should anyone be so indelicate as to mention this, he must be prepared to pay the penalty for his indiscretion. He would be informed that his room was needed, that the people who had engaged it were coming the next day, and at what time could he have his baggage ready. Mrs. Hopper had even her boarders cowed. They were made to feel that a great and distinguished privilege had been extended to them when they were allowed to remain even for a short time as guests in Mrs. Hopper’s residence. They were made to feel also that this fact had somehow miraculously removed from them the taint of being ordinary boarders. It gave them a kind of aristocratic distinction, gave them a social position of which few people could boast, enrolled them under Mrs. Hopper’s approving seal in the Bluebook of the 400. So here was a boarding house that was no boarding house at all. Call it, rather, a kind of elegant house party which went on perpetually, and to which the favored few who were invited were also graciously permitted to contribute with their funds.

  Did it work? Whoever has lived here in America must know how well it worked, how cheerfully, how meekly, how humbly, with what servility, the guests at Mrs. Hopper’s house party endured that lean and scrawny fare, endured discomfort, cold, bad plumbing, and untidy housekeeping, even endured Mrs. Hopper and her voice, her domination and her dirge of abuse, if only they could remain there in the circle of the elect, not boarders really, but distinguished people.

  That small company of the faithful returned from year to year to Mrs. Hopper’s palace. Season after season, Summer after Summer, the rooms were booked up solid. Occasionally a stranger tried to make an entrance—some parvenu, no doubt, trying to buy his way into the protected circles of the aristocracy, some low bounder with money in his pocket, some social climber. Well, they looked him over with a very cold and fishy eye at Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper’s, remarked that they did not seem to remember his face, and had he ever been to Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper’s house before. The guilty wretch would stammer out a confused and panicky admission that this, indeed, was his first visit. A cold silence then would fall upon the company. And, presently, someone would say that he had been coming there every Summer for the past fourteen years. Another would remark that his first visit was the year before the year the War with Spain
broke out. Another one would modestly confess that this was just his eleventh year and that at last he really felt that he belonged; it took ten years, he added, to feel at home. And this was true.

  So they came back year after year, this little circle of the elect. There were old man Holt and his wife, from New Orleans. There was Mr. McKethan, who stayed there all the time. He was a jeweler’s assistant, but his folks came from down near Charleston. He belonged. There was Miss Bangs, an antique spinstress, who taught in the public schools of New York City and soon would have her pension, and thereafter, it was thought, would retire forever, four seasons of the year, to the elegant seclusion of Mrs. Hopper’s house. And there was Miss Millie Teasdale, the cashier at McCormack’s pharmacy. She came from New York also, but now she was a “permanent” at Mrs. Hopper’s house.

  In the kitchen at Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper’s was Jenny Grubb, a negro woman of forty who had been there fifteen years or more. She was plump, solid, jolly, and so black that, as the saying went, charcoal would make a white mark on her. Her rich and hearty laughter, that had in it the whole black depth and warmth of Africa, could be heard all over the house. She sang forever, and her rich, strong, darkly-fibered voice could also be heard all day long. During the week she worked from dawn till after dark, from six in the morning till nine at night. On Sunday afternoon she had her day of rest. It was the day she had been preparing for, the day she had been living for all week. But Sunday afternoon was really not a day of rest for Jenny Grubb: it was a day of consecration, a day of wrath, a day of reckoning. It was potentially always the last day of the world, the day of sinners come to judgment.

  Every Sunday afternoon at three o’clock, when Mrs. Hopper’s clients had been fed. Jenny Grubb was free for three hours and made the most of it. She went out the kitchen door and round the house and up the alley to the street. She had already begun to mutter darkly and forebodingly, to herself. By the time she had crossed Locust Street and got two blocks down the hill towards town, her broad figure had begun to sway rhythmically. By the time she reached the bottom of the Central Avenue hill and turned the corner, began to mount again at Spring Street towards the Square, she had begun to breathe stertorously, to moan in a low tone, to burst into a sudden shout of praise or malediction. By the time she got to the Square, she was primed and ready. As she turned into the Square, that torpid and deserted Sunday Square of three o’clock, a warning cry burst from her.