The Web and the Root

by Thomas Wolfe

  “O sinners, I’se a-comin’!” Jenny yelled, although there were no sinners there.

  The Square was bare and empty, but it made no difference. Swaying with a rhythmical movement of her powerful and solid frame, she propelled herself rapidly across the Square to the appointed corner, warning sinners as she came. And the Square was empty. The Square was always empty. She took up her position there in the hot sun, on the corner where McCormack’s drug store and Joyner’s hardware store faced each other. For the next three hours she harangued the heated, vacant Square.

  From time to time, each quarter of the hour, the street cars of the town came in and crossed, halted and stopped. The motormen got down with their control rods in their hands, moved to the other end; the conductors swung the trolleys around. The solitary loafer leaned against the rail and picked his teeth, half-listening idly to black Jenny Grubb’s harangue. And then the cars moved out, the loafer went away, and Jenny still harangued the vacant Square.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Butcher

  Every afternoon, up the hill before Mark Joyner’s house, wheezed and panted the ancient, dilapidated truck in which Mr. Lampley, the butcher, delivered his tender, succulent steaks and chops and roasts, and his deliciously fragrant home-made sausage, headcheese, liverwurst, and fat red frankfurters. To the boy, George Webber, this glamorous and rickety machine seemed to gain glory and enchantment as the years went on and the deposits of grease and oil, together with the warm odors of sage and other spices with which he seasoned his fresh pork sausage and a dozen more of his home-made delicacies, worked their way in and through the rich, stained texture of its weathered, winelike wood. Even years later, in the transforming light of time, it seemed to him strange, important, and immense to remember Mr. Lampley, to remember his wife, his daughter, and his son, the wholesome, fragrant, and delicate quality of their work—and something as savage and wild as nature in the lives of all of them.

  Mr. Lampley had come to town as a stranger twenty years before, and a stranger he had always been since coming there. Nothing was known of his past life or origins. He was a small and hideously battered figure of a man, as compact and solid as a bullock, and with a deadly stillness and toneless quietness about all his words and movements that suggested a controlled but savagely illimitable vitality. His small, red face, which had the choleric and flaring color of the Irishman, had been so horribly drawn and twisted on one side by a hideous cut, inflicted, it was said, by another butcher with a meat cleaver in a fight long before he came to town, that it was one livid and puckered seam from throat to forehead, and even the corners of his hard lips were drawn and puckered by the scar. Moreover, the man never seemed to bat his eyelids, and his small black eyes—as hard, as black, as steady as any which ever looked out upon the light of day—glared at the world so unflinchingly, with such a formidable and deadly gaze that no man could stand their stare for long, that one’s words trembled, stammered, and faltered foolishly away as one tried to utter them, and all attempts at friendliness or intimacy were blasted and withered in a second before those two unwinking eyes. Therefore no one knew him, no one sought his friendship twice: in all the years he had lived in the town he had made, beyond his family, not one intimate or friendly connection.

  But if Mr. Lampley was formidable in his own toneless and unwinking way, his wife was no less formidable in quite another. He had married a woman native to that section, and she was one of those creatures of an epic animality and good nature whose proportions transcend the descriptive powers of language, and who can be measured by no scale of law or judgment. Of her, it could only be said that she was as innocent as nature, as merciful as a river in flood, as moral as the earth. Full of good nature and a huge, choking scream of laughter that swelled boundlessly from her mighty breast, she could in an instant have battered the brains out of anyone who crossed her or roused the witless passion of her nature; and she would never have felt a moment’s pity or regret for doing so, even if she had paid the penalty with her life.

  She was one of a large family of country people, all built on the same tremendous physical proportions, the daughter of an epic brute who had also been a butcher.

  Physically, Mrs. Lampley was the biggest woman George had ever seen. She was well over six feet tall, and must have weighed more than two hundred pounds, and yet she was not fat. Her hands were ham-like in their size and shape, her arms and legs great swelling haunches of limitless power and strength, her breast immense and almost depthless in its fullness. She had a great mass of thick, dark red hair; eyes as clear, grey, and depthless as a cat’s; a wide, thin, rather loose, and cruel mouth; and a skin which, while clear and healthy-looking, had somehow a murky, glutinous quality—the quality of her smile and her huge, choking laugh—as if all the ropy and spermatic fluids of the earth were packed into her.

  There was nothing to measure her by, no law by which to judge her: the woman burst out beyond the limit of all human valuations, and for this reason she smote terror to George’s heart. She could tell stories so savage in their quality that the heart was sickened at them, and at the same time throw back her great throat and scream with laughter as she told them—and her laughter was terrible, not because it was cruel, but because the substance of which cruelty is made was utterly lacking in her nature.

  Thus she would describe incidents out of the life of her father, the butcher, in a strangely soft, countrified tone of voice, which always held in it, however, a suggestion of limitless power, and the burble of huge, choking laughter that would presently burst from her:

  “There used to be a cat down there at the market,” she drawled, “who was always prowlin’ and snoopin’ around to get at his meat, you know,” she went on confidentially in a quiet, ropy tone, and with a faint smile about her mouth. “Well,” she said, with a little heaving chuckle of her mighty breasts, “the old man was gittin’ madder an’ madder all the time, an’ one day when he found the cat had been at his meat again, he says to me—you know, I used to keep his books fer him—the old man turns to me, an’ says, ‘If I ketch that son-of-a-bitch in here again I’m goin’ to cut his head off—’” Here she paused to chuckle, her great throat swelling with its burble of laughter and her mighty bosom swelling. “I could see he was gittin’ mad, you know,” she said in that almost unctuous drawl, “and I knew that cat was goin’ to git in trouble if he didn’t mind!…Well, sir,” she said, beginning to gasp a little, “it wasn’t ten minutes afore the old man looked up an’ saw the cat over yonder on the chopping block fixin’ to git at a great big side of beef the old man had put there!…Well, when the old man sees that cat he lets out a yell you could hear from here across the Square! ‘You son-of-a-bitch!’ he says, ‘I told you I’d kill you if I caught you here again!’—and he picks up a cleaver,” she gasped, “and throws it at that cat as hard as he could let fly, and—har!—har!—har!—har!”—she screamed suddenly, her great throat swelling like a bull’s, and a wave of limitless laughter bursting from her and ending in a scream—“he ketches that damn cat as perty as anything you ever saw, an’ cuts him plumb in two—har!—har!—har!—har—!”—And this, time her huge laughter seemed too immense even for her mighty frame to hold, and the tears ran down her cheeks as she sank back gasping in her chair. “Lord! Lord!” she gasped. “That was the pertiest thing I ever see! I liked to laffed myself to death,” she panted, and then, still trembling, began to wipe at her streaming eyes with the back of one huge hand.

  Again, one day, she told this merry story of her honored sire:

  “A nigger came in there one day,” she said, “an’ told the old man to cut him off a piece of meat an’ wrap it up for him. When the old man gave it to him, the nigger begins to argue with him,” she said, “an’ to give him some back-talk, claimin’ the old man was cheatin’ him on the weight an’ tryin’ to charge him too much fer it! Well, sir,” she said, beginning to gasp a little, “the old man picks up a carving knife an’ he makes one swipe across the counter at t
hat nigger with it—and—har!—har!—har!”—her huge laugh burst out of her mighty breast again and welled upward to a choking, ropy scream, “—that nigger!—that nigger!—his guts came rollin’ out into his hands like sausage meat!” she gasped. “I wish’t you could have seen the look upon his face!” she panted. “He just stood there lookin’ at them like he don’t know what to do with them—and har!—har!—har!”—she cast her swelling throat back and roared with laughter, subsiding finally to huge, gasping mirth—“that was the funniest thing I ever see! If you could a-seen the look upon that nigger’s face!” she panted, wiping at her streaming eyes with the back of her huge paw.

  WHENEVER A TALL, strong, powerfully-built man came for the first time into the butcher’s little shop, Mrs. Lampley would immediately comment on his size and strength in a flattering and good-natured tone, but with something speculative and hard in her eye as she surveyed him, as if she was coldly calculating his chances with her in a knockdown fight. Many men had observed this look of appraisal, and George had heard men say that there was something so savagely calculating in it that it had made their blood run cold. She would look them over with a good-natured smile, but with a swift narrowing of her cat-grey eyes as she sized them up, meanwhile saying in a bantering and hearty tone of voice:

  “Say! You’re a right big feller, ain’t you? I was lookin’ at you when you came in—you could hardly git through the door,” she chuckled. “I said to myself, ‘I’d hate to git mixed up in any trouble with him,’ I says, ‘I’ll bet a feller like that could hit you an awful lick if you git him mad….’ How much do you weigh?” she would then say, still smiling, but with those cold, narrowed, grey eyes measuring the unhappy stranger up and down.

  And when the wretched man had stammered out his weight, she would say softly, in a contemplative fashion: “Uh-huh!” And after going over him a moment longer with those merciless and slitlike eyes, she would say, with an air of hearty finality: “Well, you’re a big ’un, sure enough! I’ll bet you’ll be a big help to your paw an’ maw when you get your growth—har!—har!—har!—har!” And the choking scream of laughter would then burst from her Atlantean breasts and bull-like throat.

  When she spoke of her husband she always referred to him as “Lampley,” and this was the way she always addressed him. Her tone when she spoke of him certainly had in it nothing that could be described as affection, for such a feeling would have had no more place in her nature than a swan upon the breast of the flood-tide Mississippi, but her tone had in it a note of brutal and sensual satisfaction that somehow told plainly and terribly of a perfect marriage of savage and limitless sexual energies, and of a mate in the battered figure of that little bullock man who could match and fit this mountain of a woman perfectly in an epic, night-long bout of lust and passion.

  Mrs. Lampley spoke constantly, openly, vulgarly, and often with a crude, tremendous humor, of the sexual act, and although she never revealed the secrets of her own marriage bed—if a union so savage, complete, and obvious as the one between herself and her husband could be called a secret—she did not for a moment hesitate to publish her opinions on the subject to the world, to give young married couples, or young men and their girls, advice that would make them flush to the roots of their hair, and to scream with merriment when she saw their confusion.

  Her son, Baxter, at this time a youth of eighteen, had just a year or two before taken a young girl by force, a well-developed and seductive red-haired girl of fourteen. This event, so far from causing his mother any distress, had seemed to her so funny that she had published it to the whole town, describing with roars of laughter her interview with the girl’s outraged mother:

  “Why, hell yes!” she said. “She came down here to see me, all broke out in a sweat about it, sayin’ Baxter had ruined her daughter an’ what was I goin’ to do about it!—‘Now, you look a-here!’ I said. ‘You jist git down off your high horse! He’s ruined no one,’ I says, ‘for there was no one to ruin to begin with’—har!—har!—har!—har!”—the full, choking scream burst from her throat—“‘Now,’ I says, ‘if she turns out to be a whore, she’ll come by it natural’—har!—har!—har!—har!—‘an’ Baxter didn’t make her one,’ I says. ‘What do you mean? What do you mean?’ she says—oh! gittin’ red as a ripe termater an’ beginnin’ to shake her finger in my face—‘I’ll have you put in jail fer slander,’ she says, ‘that’s what I’ll do!’ ‘Slander!’ I says, ‘Slander! Well, if it’s slander,’ I says, ‘the law has changed since my day and time. It’s the first time I ever knew you could slander a whore,’ I says, ‘by callin’ her by her right name.’ ‘Don’t you call my daughter no name like that,’ she says, oh, madder’n a wet hen, you know—‘Don’t you dare to! I’ll have you arrested,’ she says. ‘Why, God-damn you!’ I says—that’s just the way I talked to her, you know, ‘everyone knows what your daughter is!’ I says, ‘so you git on out of here,’ I says, ‘before I git mad an’ tell you something you may not like to hear!’—and I’m tellin’ you, she went!” And the huge creature leaned back gasping for a moment.

  “Hell!” she went on quietly in a moment, “I asked Baxter about it and he told me. ‘Baxter,’ I says, ‘that woman has been here now an’ I want to know: did you jump on that girl an’ take it from her?’ ‘Why, mama,’ he says, ‘take it from her? Why, she took it from me!’ says Baxter—har!—har!—har!—har!”—the tremendous laughter filled her throat and choked her. “Hell!’ says Baxter, ‘she throwed me down an’ almost broke my back! If I hadn’t done like I did I don’t believe she’d ever a-let me out of there!’—har!—har!—har!—har!—I reckon ole Baxter figgered it might as well be him as the next one,” she panted, wiping at her streaming eyes. “I reckon he figgered he might as well git a little of it while the gittin’ was good. But Lord!” sighed, “I laffed about that thing until my sides was sore—har!—har!—har!—har!—har!”—and the enormous creature came forward in her creaking chair again, as the huge laughter filled her, and made the walls tremble with its limitless well of power.

  Towards her own daughter, however, whose name was Grace, and who was fifteen at this time, Mrs. Lampley was virtuously, if brutally, attentive. In both the children the inhuman vitality of their parents was already apparent, and in the girl, especially, the measureless animal power of her mother had already developed. At fifteen, she was a tremendous creature, almost as tall as her mother, and so fully matured that the flimsy little cotton dresses she wore, and which would have been proper for most children of her age, were almost obscenely inadequate. In the heavy calves, swelling thighs, and full breasts of this great, white-fleshed creature of fifteen years there was already evident a tremendous seductiveness; men looked at her with a terrible fascination and felt the wakening of unreasoning desire, and turned their eyes away from her with a feeling of strong shame.

  Over this girl’s life already there hung the shadow of fatality. Without knowing why, one felt certain that this great creature must come to grief and ruin—as one reads that giants die early, and things which are too great in nature for the measure of the world destroy themselves. In the girl’s large, vacant, and regularly beautiful face, and in the tender, empty, and sensual smile which dwelt forever there, this legend of unavoidable catastrophe was plainly written.

  The girl rarely spoke, and seemed to have no variety of passion save that indicated by her constant, limitlessly sensual, and vacant smile. And as she stood obedient and docile beside her mother, and that huge creature spoke of her with a naked frankness, and as the girl smiled always that tender, vacant smile as if her mother’s words had no meaning for her, the feeling of something inhuman and catastrophic in the natures of these people was overwhelming:

  “Yes,” Mrs. Lampley would drawl, as the girl stood smiling vacantly at her side. “She’s growed up here on me before I knowed it, an’ I got to watch her all the time now to keep some son-of-a-bitch from knockin’ her up an’ ruinin’ her. Here only a month or two ago two of these
fellers down here at the livery stable—you know who I mean,” she said carelessly, and in a soft, contemptuous voice—“that dirty, good-fer-nothin’ Pegram feller an’ that other low-down bastard he runs around with—what’s his name, Grace?” she said impatiently, turning to the girl.

  “That’s Jack Cashman, mama,” the girl answered in a soft and gentle tone, without changing for a second the tender, vacant smile upon her face.

  “Yeah, that’s him!” said Mrs. Lampley. “That low-down Cashman—if I ever ketch him foolin’ around here again I’ll break his neck, an’ I reckon he knows it, too,” she said grimly. “Why, I let her out, you know, one night along this Spring, to mail some letters,” she went on in an explanatory tone, “an’ told her not to be gone more’n half an hour—an’ these two fellers picked her up in a buggy they was drivin’ an’ took her fer a ride way up the mountain side. Well, I waited an’ waited till ten o’clock had struck, an’ still she didn’t come. An’ I walked the floor, an’ walked the floor, an’ waited—an’ by that time I was almost out of my head! I’ll swear, I thought I would go crazy,” she said slowly and virtuously. “I didn’t know what to do. An’ finally, when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I went upstairs an’ waked Lampley up. Of course, you know Lampley,” she chuckled. “He goes to bed early. He’s in bed every night by nine o’clock, and he ain’t goin’ to lose sleep over nobody. Well, I waked him up,” she said slowly. “Lampley,’ I says, ‘Grace’s been gone from here two hours, an I’m goin’ to find her if I have to spend the rest of the night lookin’ for her.’—‘Well how you goin’ to find her,’ he says, ‘if you don’t know where she’s gone?’—‘I don’t know,’ I says, ‘but I’ll find her if I’ve got to walk every street an’ break into every house in town—an’ if I find some son-of-a-bitch has taken advantage of her, I’ll kill him with my bare hands,’” said Mrs. Lampley. “I’ll kill the two of them together—for I’d rather see her layin’ dead than know she’s turned out to be a whore’—that’s what I said to him,” said Mrs. Lampley.