The Web and the Root

by Thomas Wolfe

  During all this time, the girl stood obediently beside the chair in which her mother sat, smiling her tender, vacant smile, and with no other sign of emotion whatever.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Lampley slowly, “then I heard her. I heard her while I was talkin’ to Lampley, openin’ the door easylike an’ creepin’ up the stairs. Well, I didn’t say nothin’—I just waited until I heard her tiptoe in along the hall past Lampley’s door—an’ then I opened it an’ called to her. ‘Grace,’ I said, ‘where’ve you been?’—Well,” said Mrs. Lampley with an air of admission, “she told me. She never tried to lie to me. I’ll say that fer her, she’s never lied to me yet. If she did,” she added grimly, “I reckon she knows I’d break her neck.”

  And the girl stood there passively, smiling all the time.

  “Well, then.” said Mrs. Lampley, “she told me who she’d been with and where they’d been. Well—I thought I’d go crazy!” the woman said slowly and deliberately. “I took her by the arms an’ looked at her. ‘Grace,’ I said, ‘you look me in the eye an’ tell me the truth—did those two fellers do anything to you?’—‘No,’ she says.—‘Well, you come with me,’ I says, ‘I’ll find out if you’re telling me the truth, if I’ve got to kill you to git it out of you.’”

  And for a moment the huge creature was silent, staring grimly ahead, while her daughter stood beside her and smiled her gentle and imperturbably sensual smile.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Lampley slowly, as she stared ahead, “I took her down into the cellar—and,” she said with virtuous accents of slight regret, “I don’t suppose I should have done it to her, but I was so worried—so worried,” she cried strangely, “to think that after all the bringin’ up she’d had, an’ all the trouble me an’ Lampley had taken tryin’ to keep her straight—that I reckon I went almost crazy…. I reached down an’ tore loose a board in an old packin’ case we had down there,” she said slowly, “an’ I beat her! I beat her,” she cried powerfully, “until the blood soaked through her dress an’ run down on the floor…. I beat her till she couldn’t stand,” cried Mrs. Lampley, with an accent of strange maternal virtue in her voice, “I beat her till she got down on her knees an’ begged for mercy—now that was how hard I beat her,” she said proudly. “An’ you know it takes a lot to make Grace cry—she won’t cry fer nothin’—so you may know I beat her mighty hard,” said Mrs. Lampley, in a tone of strong satisfaction.

  And during all this time the girl just stood passively with her sweet and vacant smile, and presently Mrs. Lampley heaved a powerful sigh of maternal tribulation, and, shaking her head slowly, said:

  “But, Lord! Lord! They’re a worry an’ a care to you from the moment that they’re born! You sweat an’ slave to bring ’em up right—an’ even then you can’t tell what will happen. You watch ’em day an’ night—an’ then the first low-down bastard that comes along may git ’em out an’ ruin ’em the first time your back is turned!”

  And again she sighed heavily, shaking her head. And in this grotesque and horribly comic manifestation of motherly love and solicitude, and in the vacant, tender smile upon the girl’s large, empty face there really was something moving, terribly pitiful, and unutterable.

  WHENEVER GEORGE THOUGHT of this savage and tremendous family, his vision always returned again to Mr. Lampley himself, whose last, whose greatest secrecy, was silence. He talked to no one more than the barest necessity of business speech demanded, and when he spoke, either in question or reply, his speech was as curt and monosyllabic as speech could be, and his hard, blazing eyes, which he kept pointed as steady as a pistol at the face of anyone to whom he spoke or listened, repelled effectively any desire for a more spacious conversation. Yet, when he did speak, his voice was never surly, menacing, or snarling. It was a low, hard, toneless voice, as steady and unwavering as his hard black eyes, yet not unpleasant in its tone or timbre; it was, like everything about him save the naked, blazing eyes—hard, secret, and contained. He simply fastened his furious and malignant little eyes on one and spoke as brief and short as possible.

  “Talk!” a man said. “Why, hell, he don’t need to talk! He just stands there and lets those eyes of his do all the talkin’ for him!” And this was true.

  Beyond this bare anatomy of speech, George had heard him speak on only one occasion. This had been one day when he had come to make collections for the meat he had delivered. At this time it was known in the town that Mr. Lampley’s son, Baxter, had been accused of stealing money from the man he worked for, and that—so ran the whispered and discreditable rumor—Baxter had been compelled to leave town. On this day when Mr. Lampley came to make collections, Aunt Maw, spurred by her native curiosity, and the desire that people have to hear the confirmation of their worst suspicions from the lips of those who are most painfully concerned, spoke to the butcher with the obvious and clumsy casualness of tone that people use on these occasions:

  “Oh, Mr. Lampley,” she said, as if by an afterthought when she had paid him, “say—by the way—I was meanin’ to ask you. What’s become of Baxter? I was thinkin’ just the other day, I don’t believe I’ve seen him for the last month or two.”

  During all the time she spoke, the man’s blazing eyes never faltered in their stare upon her face, and they neither winked nor wavered as he answered.

  “No,” he said, in his low, hard, toneless voice. “I don’t suppose you have. He’s not livin’ here any more. He’s in the navy.”

  “What say?” Aunt Maw cried eagerly, opening the screen door a trifle wider and moving forward. “The navy?” she said sharply.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Mr. Lampley tonelessly, “the navy. It was a question of join the navy or go to jail. I gave him his choice. He joined the navy,” Mr. Lampley said grimly.

  “What say? Jail?” she said eagerly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mr. Lampley replied. “He stole money from the man he was workin’ for, as I reckon maybe you have heard by now. He done something he had no right to do. He took money that did not belong to him,” he said with a brutal stubbornness. “When they caught him at it they came to me and told me they’d let him go if I’d make good the money that he’d stolen. So I said to him: ‘All right. I’ll give ’em the money if you join the navy. Now, you can take your choice—it’s join the navy or go to jail. What do you want to do?’ He joined the navy,” Mr. Lampley again concluded grimly.

  As for Aunt Maw, she stood for a moment reflectively, and now, her sharp curiosity having been appeased by this blunt and final statement, a warmer, more engaging sentiment of friendliness and sympathy was awakened in her:

  “Well, now, I tell you what,” she said hopefully, “I believe you did just the thing you should have done. I believe that’s the very thing Baxter needs. Why, yes!” she now cried cheerfully. “He’ll go off there and see the world and meet up with all kinds of people, and learn to keep the proper sort of hours and lead a good, normal, healthy sort of life—for there’s one thing sure,” she said oracularly, “you can’t violate the laws of nature. If you do, you’ll have to pay for it some day as sure as you’re born,” she said solemnly, as she shook her head, “as sure as you’re born.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Mr. Lampley in his low, toneless voice, keeping his little blazing eyes fixed straight upon her.

  “Why, yes,” Aunt Maw cried again, and this time with the vigorous accents of a mounting cheerful certitude, “they’ll teach that boy a trade and regular habits and the proper way to live, and you mark my words, everything’s goin’ to turn out good for him,” she said with heartening conviction. “He’ll forget all about this trouble. Why, yes!—the whole thing will blow right over, people will forget all about it. Why, say! everyone is liable to make a mistake sometime, aren’t they?” she said persuasively. “That happens to everyone—and I’ll bet you. I’ll bet you anything you like that when that boy comes back—”

  “He ain’t comin’ back,” said Mr. Lampley.

  “What say?” Aunt Maw cried in a sh
arp, startled tone.

  “I said he ain’t comin’ back,” said Mr. Lampley.

  “Why what’s the reason he’s not?” she said.

  “Because if he does,” said Mr. Lampley, “I’ll kill him. And he knows it.”

  She stood looking at him for a moment with a slight frown.

  “Oh, Mr. Lampley,” she said quietly, shaking her head with a genial regret, “I’m sorry to hear you say that. I don’t like to hear you talk that way.”

  He stared at her grimly for a moment with his furious, blazing eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, as if he had not heard her. “I’ll kill him. If he ever comes back here, I’ll kill him. I’ll beat him to death,” he said.

  Aunt Maw looked at him, shaking her head a little, saying with a closed mouth: “Huh, huh, huh, huh.”

  He was silent.

  “I never could stand a thief,” he said at length. “If it’d been anything else, I could’ve forgotten it. But a thief!” for the first time his voice rose hoarsely on a surge of passion. “Ah-h-h!” he muttered, stroking his head, and now there was a queer note of trouble and bewilderment in his hard tone. “You don’t know! You don’t know,” he said, “the trouble I have had with that boy! His mother an’ me done all we could for him. We worked hard an’ we tried to raise him right—but we couldn’t do nothing with him,” he muttered. “He was a bad egg.” He looked at her quietly a moment with his little, blazing eyes. Then he said, slowly and deliberately, and with a note of strong rising virtue in his voice, “I beat him, I beat him till he couldn’t stand up—I beat him till the blood ran down his back—but it didn’t do no more good than if I was beatin’ at a post,” he said. “No, ma’am. I might as well have beaten at a post.”

  And now his voice had a queer, hard note of grief, regret, and resignation in it, as if a man might say: “All that a father could do for a son I did for mine. But if a man shall beat his son until the blood runs down his back, and still that son learns neither grace nor penitence, what more can a father do?”

  He paused a moment longer, with his eyes fixed hard upon her.

  “No, ma’am,” he concluded, in his low, toneless voice, “I never expect to see his face again. He’ll never come back here. He knows I’ll kill him if he does.” Then he turned and walked off towards his ancient vehicle while Aunt Maw stood watching him with a troubled and regretful face.

  AND HE HAD told the truth. Baxter never did come back. He was as lost to all of them as if he had been dead. They never saw him again.

  But George, who heard all this, remembered Baxter suddenly. He remembered his part-brutal, part-corrupted face. He was a creature criminal from nature and entirely innocent. His laugh was throaty with a murky, hoarse, and hateful substance in it; there was something too glutinously liquid, rank, and coarse in his smile; and his eyes looked wet. He had too strange and sudden and too murderously obscure a rage for the clear, hard passions most boys knew. He had a knife with a long, curved blade, and when he saw negroes in the street he put his hand upon his knife. He made half-sobbings in his throat when his rage took hold of him. Yet he was large, quite handsome, well-proportioned. He was full of rough, sudden play, and was always challenging a boy to wrestle with him. He could wrestle strongly, rudely, laughing hoarsely if he flung somebody to the ground, enjoying a bruising struggle, and liking to pant and scuffle harshly with skinned knees upon the earth; and yet he would stop suddenly if he had made his effort but found his opponent stronger than he was, and succumb inertly, with a limp, sudden weakness, smiling, with no pride or hurt, as his opponent pinned him to the earth.

  There was something wrong in this; and there was something ropy, milky, undefined in all the porches of his blood, so that, George felt, had Baxter’s flesh been cut or broken, had he bled, there would have been a ropy, milkweed mucus before blood came. He carried pictures in his pockets, photographs from Cuba, so he said, of shining naked whores in their rank white flesh and hairiness, in perverse and Latin revels with men with black mustaches, and he spoke often of experiences he had had with girls in town, and with negro women.

  All this George remembered with a rush of naked vividness.

  But he remembered also a kindness, a warmth and friendliness, equally strange and sudden, which Baxter had; something swift and eager, wholly liberal, which made him wish to share all he had—the sausages and sandwiches which he brought with him to school, together with all his enormous and delicious lunch—offering and thrusting the rich bounty of his lunch box, which would smell with an unutterable fragrance and delight, at the other boys with a kind of eager, asking, and insatiable generosity. And at times his voice was gentle, and his manner had this same strange, eager, warm, and almost timid gentleness and friendliness.

  George remembered passing the butcher shop once, and from the basement, warm with its waft of fragrant spices, he suddenly heard Baxter screaming:

  “Oh, I’ll be good! I’ll be good!”—and that sound from this rough, brutal boy had suddenly pierced him with an unutterable sense of shame and pity.

  This, then, was Baxter as George had known him, and as he remembered him when the butcher spoke of him that day. And as the butcher spoke his hard and toneless words of judgment, George felt a wave of intolerable pity and regret pass over him as he remembered Baxter (although he had not known him well or seen him often), and knew he never would come back again.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Child by Tiger

  One day after school, Monk and several of the boys were playing with a football in the yard at Randy Shepperton’s. Randy was calling signals and handling the ball. Nebraska Crane was kicking it. Augustus Potterham was too clumsy to run or kick or pass, so they put him at center where all he’d have to do would be to pass the ball back to Randy when he got the signal. To the other boys, Gus Potterham was their freak child, their lame duck, the butt of their jokes and ridicule, but they also had a sincere affection for him; he was something to be taken in hand, to be protected and cared for.

  There were several other boys who were ordinarily members of their group. They had Harry Higginson and Sam Pennock, and two boys named Howard Jarvis and Jim Redmond. It wasn’t enough to make a team, of course. They didn’t have room enough to play a game even if they had had team enough. What they played was really a kind of skeletonized practice game, with Randy and Nebraska back, Gus at center, two other fellows at the ends, and Monk and two or three more on the other side, whose duty was to get in and “break it up” if they could.

  It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, late in October, and there was a smell of smoke, of leaves, of burning in the air. Bras had just kicked to Monk. It was a good kick too—a high, soaring punt that spiraled out above Monk’s head, behind him. He ran back and tried to get it, but it was far and away “over the goal line”—that is to say, out in the street. It hit the street and bounded back and forth with that peculiarly erratic bounce a football has.

  The ball rolled away from Monk down towards the corner. He was running out to get it when Dick Prosser, Sheppertons’ new negro man, came along, gathered it up neatly in his great black paw, and tossed it to him. Dick turned in then, and came on around the house, greeting the boys as he came. He called all of them “Mister” except Randy, and Randy was always “Cap’n”—” Cap’n Shepperton.” This formal address—“Mr.” Crane, “Mr.” Potterham, “Mr.” Webber, “Cap’n” Shepperton—pleased them immensely, gave them a feeling of mature importance and authority.

  “Cap’n Shepperton” was splendid! It was something more to all of them than a mere title of respect. It had a delightful military association, particularly when Dick Prosser said it. Dick had served a long enlistment in the U. S. army. He had been a member of a regiment of crack negro troops upon the Texas border, and the stamp of the military man was evident in everything he did. It was a joy just to watch him split up kindling. He did it with a power, a clean precision, a kind of military order, that was astounding. Every stick he cut se
emed to be exactly the same length and shape as every other. He had all of them neatly stacked against the walls of the Shepperton basement with such regimented faultlessness that it almost seemed a pity to disturb their symmetry for the use for which they were intended.

  It was the same with everything else he did. His little whitewashed basement room was as spotless as a barracks room. The bare board floor was always cleanly swept, a plain, bare table and a plain, straight chair were stationed exactly in the center of the room. On the table there was always just one object—an old Bible with a limp cover, almost worn out by constant use, for Dick was a deeply religious man. There was a little cast-iron stove and a little wooden box with a few lumps of coal and a neat stack of kindling in it. And against the wall, to the left, there was an iron cot, always precisely made and covered cleanly with a coarse grey blanket.

  The Sheppertons were delighted with him. He had come there looking for work just a month or two before, “gone around to the back door” and modestly presented his qualifications. He had, he said, only recently received his discharge from the army, and was eager to get employment, at no matter what wage. He could cook, he could tend the furnace, he could do odd jobs, he was handy at carpentry, he knew how to drive a car—in fact, it seemed to the boys that there was very little that Dick Prosser could not do.