The Web and the Root

by Thomas Wolfe

  The mountains in the Wintertime had a stern and demonic quality of savage joy that was, in its own way, as strangely, wildy haunting as all of the magic and the gold of April. In Spring, or in the time-enchanted spell and drowse of full, deep Summer, there was always something far and lonely, haunting with ecstasy and sorrow, desolation and the intolerable, numb exultancy of some huge, impending happiness. It was a cow bell, drowsy, far and broken in a gust of wind, as it came to him faintly from the far depth and distance of a mountain valley; the receding whistle-wail of a departing train, as it rushed eastward, seaward, towards the city, through some green mountain valley of the South; or a cloud shadow passing on the massed green of the wilderness, and the animate stillness, the thousand sudden, thrumming, drumming, stitching, unseen little voices in the lyric mystery of tangled undergrowth about him.

  His uncle and he would go toiling up the mountain side, sometimes striding over rutted, clay-baked, and frost-hardened roads, sometimes beating their way downhill, with as bold and wild a joy as wilderness explorers ever knew, smashing their way through the dry and brittle undergrowth of barren Winter, hearing the dry report of bough and twig beneath their feet, the masty spring and crackle of brown ancient leaves, and brown pine needles, the elastic, bedded compost of a hundred buried and forgotten Winters.

  Meanwhile, all about them, the great trees of the mountain side, at once ruggedly familiar and strangely, hauntingly austere, rose grim and barren, as stern and wild and lonely as the savage winds that warred forever, with a remote, demented howling, in their stormy, tossed, and leafless branches.

  And above them the stormy wintry skies—sometimes a savage sky of wild, torn grey that came so low its scudding fringes whipped like rags of smoke around the mountain tops; sometimes an implacable, fierce sky of wintry grey; sometimes a sky of rags and tatters of wild, wintry light, westering into slashed stripes of rugged red and incredible wild gold at the gateways of the sun—bent over them forever with that same savage and unutterable pain and sorrow, that ecstasy of wild desire, that grief of desolation, that spirit of exultant joy, that was as gleeful, mad, fierce, lonely, and enchanted with its stormy and unbodied promises of flight, its mad swoopings through the dark over the whole vast sleeping wintriness of earth, as that stormy and maniacal wind, which seemed, in fact, to be the very spirit of the joy, the sorrow, and the wild desire he felt.

  That wind would rush upon them suddenly as they toiled up rocky trails, or smashed through wintry growth, or strode along the hardened, rutted roads, or came out on the lonely, treeless bareness of a mountain top. And that wind would rush upon him with its own wild life and fill him with its spirit. As he gulped it down into his aching lungs, his whole life seemed to soar, to swoop, to yell with the demonic power, flight, and invincible caprice of the wind’s huge well until he no longer was nothing but a boy of fifteen, the nephew of a hardware merchant in a little town, one of the nameless little atoms of this huge, swarming earth whose most modest dream would have seemed ridiculous to older people had he dared to speak of it.

  No. Under the immense intoxication of that great, demented wind, he would become instantly triumphant to all this damning and overwhelming evidence of fact, age, prospect, and position. He was a child of fifteen no longer. He was the overlord of this great earth, and he looked down from the mountain top upon his native town, a conqueror. Not from the limits of a little, wintry town, lost in remote and lonely hills from the great heart, the time-enchanted drone and distant murmur of the shining city of this earth, but from the very peak and center of this world he looked on his domains with the joy of certitude and victory, and he knew that everything on earth that he desired was his.

  Saddled in power upon the wild back of that maniacal force, not less wild, willful, and all-conquering than the steed that carried him, he would hold the kingdoms of the earth in fee, inhabit the world at his caprice, swoop in the darkness over mountains, rivers, plains, and cities, look under roofs, past walls and doors, into a million rooms, and know all things at once, and lie in darkness in some lonely and forgotten place with a woman, lavish, wild, and secret as the earth. The whole earth, its fairest fame of praise, its dearest treasure of a great success, its joy of travel, all its magic of strange lands, the relish of unknown, tempting foods, its highest happiness of adventure and love—would all be his: flight, storm, wandering, the great sea and all its traffic of proud ships, and the great plantation of the earth, together with the certitude and comfort of return—fence, door, wall, and roof, the single face and dwelling-place of love.

  BUT SUDDENLY THESE wild, demonic dreams would fade, for he would hear his uncle’s voice again, and see the gaunt fury of his bony figure, his blazing eye, the passionate and husky anathema of his trembling voice, as, standing there upon that mountain top and gazing down upon the little city of his youth, Mark Joyner spoke of all the things that tortured him. Sometimes it was his life with Mag, his young man’s hopes of comfort, love, and quiet peace that now had come to nought but bitterness and hate. Again his mind went groping back to older, deeper-buried sorrows. And on this day as they stood there, his mind went back, and, turning now to George and to the wind that howled there in his face, he suddenly brought forth and hurled down from that mountain top the acid of an ancient rancor, denouncing now the memory of old Fate, his father. He told his hatred and his loathing of his father’s life, the deathless misery of his own youth, which lived for him again in all its anguish even after fifty years had passed.

  “As each one of my unhappy brothers and sisters was born,” he declared in a voice so husky and tremulous with his passionate resentment that it struck terror to the boy’s heart, “I cursed him—cursed the day that God had given him life! And still they came!” he whispered, eyes ablaze and furious, in a voice that almost faltered to a sob. “Year after year they came with the blind proliferation of his criminal desire—into a house where there was scarcely roof enough to shelter us—in a vile, ramshackle shamble of a place.” he snarled, “where the oldest of us slept three in a bed, and where the youngest, weakest, and most helpless of us all was lucky if he had a pallet of rotten straw that he could call his own! When we awoke at morning our famished guts were aching!—aching!” he howled, “with the damnable gnawing itch of hunger!—My dear child, my dear, dear child!” he exclaimed, in a transition of sudden and terrifying gentleness—“May that, of all life’s miseries, be a pang you never have to suffer!—And we lay down at night always unsatisfied—oh always! always! always!” he cried with an impatient gesture of his hand—“to struggle for repose like restless animals—crammed with distressful bread—swollen with fatback and boiled herbs out of the fields, while your honored grandfather—the Major!…The Major!” he now sneered, and suddenly he contorted his gaunt face in a grotesque grimace and laughed with a sneering, deliberated, forced mirth.

  “Now, my boy,” he went on presently in a more tranquil tone of patronizing tolerance, “you have no doubt often heard your good Aunt Maw speak with the irrational and incondite exuberance of her sex,” he continued, smacking his lips together audibly with an air of relish as he pronounced these formidable words—“of that paragon of all the moral virtues—her noble sire, the Major!” Here he paused to laugh sneeringly again. “And perhaps, boylike, you have conceived in your imagination a picture of that distinguished gentleman that is somewhat more romantic than the facts will stand!…Well, my boy,” he went on deliberately, with the birdlike turn of his head as he looked at the boy, “lest your fancy be seduced somewhat by illusions of aristocratic grandeur, I will tell you a few facts about that noble man…. He was the self-appointed Major of a regiment of backwoods volunteers, of whom no more be said than that they were, if possible, less literate than he!…You are descended, it is true,” he went on with his calm precise deliberation, “from a warlike stock—but none of them my dear child, were Brigadiers—no, not even Majors,” he sneered, “for the highest genuine rank I ever heard of them attaining was the rank of corpo
ral—and that proud dignity was the office of the Major’s pious brother—I refer, of course, my boy, to your great-uncle, Rance Joyner!…

  “Rance! Rance!”—here he contorted his face again—“Gods! What a name! No wonder he smote fear and trembling to the Yankee heart!…The sight of him was certainly enough to make them stand stock-still at the height of an attack! And the smell of him would surely be enough to strike awe and wonder in the hearts of mortal men—I refer, of course,” he said sardonically, “to the average run of base humanity, since, as you well know, neither your grandfather nor his brother, Holy Rance, nor any other Joyner that I know,” he jeered, “could be compared to mortal men. We admit that much ourselves. For all of us, my boy, were not so much conceived like other men as willed here by an act of God, created by a visitation of the Holy Ghost, trailing clouds of glory as we came,” he sneered, “and surely you must have discovered by this time that it is our unique privilege to act as prophets, messengers, and agents, of the deity here on earth—to demonstrate God’s ways to man—to reveal the inmost workings of His providence and all the mysterious secrets of the universe to other men who have not been so sanctified by destiny as we….

  “But be that as it may,” he went on, with one of his sudden and astonishing changes from howling fury to tolerant and tranquil admis-siveness. “I believe there was no question of your holy great-uncle’s valor. Yes, sir!” he continued, “I have heard them say that he could kill at fifty or five hundred yards, and always wing his bullet with a gospel text to make it holy!…Why, my dear child,” the boy’s uncle cried, “there was as virtuous a ruffian as ever split a skull! He blew their brains out with a smile of saintly charity, and sang hosannas over them as they expired! He sanctified the act of murder, and assured them as they weltered in their blood that he had come to them as an angel of mercy bearing to them the gifts of immortal life and everlasting happiness in exchange for the vile brevity of their earthly lives, which he had taken from them with such sweet philanthropy. He shot them through the heart and promised them all the blessings of the Day of Armageddon with so soft a tongue that they fairly wept for joy and kissed the hand of their redeemer as they died!…

  “Yes,” he went on tranquilly, “there is no question of your great-uncle’s valor—or his piety—but still, my boy, his station was a lowly one—he never reached a higher rank than corporal! And there were others, too, who fought well and bravely in that war—but they, too, were obscure men! Your great-uncle John, a boy of twenty-two, was killed in battle on the bloody field of Shiloh…. And there are many others of your kinsmen, who fought, died, bled, were wounded, perished, or survived in that great war—but none of them, my dear child, was a Major!…There was only one Major!” he bitterly remarked. “Only your noble grandsire was a Major!”

  Thus, for a moment, in the fading light of that Winter’s day, he paused there on the mountain top above the town, his gaunt face naked, lonely, turned far and lost, into the fierce wintry light of a flaming setting sun, into the lost and lonely vistas of the western ranges, among those hills which had begotten him. When he spoke again his voice was sad and quiet and calmly bitter, and somehow impregnated with that wonderful remote and haunting quality that seemed to come like sorcery from some far distance—a distance that was itself as far and lonely in its haunting spatial qualities as those fading western ranges where his face was turned.

  “The Major,” he quietly remarked, “my honored father—Major Lafayette Joyner!—Major of Hominy Run and Whooping Holler, the martial overlord of Sandy Mush, the Bonaparte of Zebulon County and the Pink Beds, the crafty strategist of Frying Pan Gap, the Little Corporal of the Home Guards who conducted that great operation on the river road just four miles east of town,” he sneered, “where two volleys were fired after flying hooves of two of General Sherman’s horse thieves—with no result except to hasten their escape!…The Major!” his voice rose strangely on its note of husky passion. “That genius with the master talent who could do all things—except keep food in the cupboard for a week!” Here he closed his eyes tightly and laughed deliberately again.

  “Why, my dear boy!” his uncle said, “he could discourse for hours on end most learnedly—oh! most learnedly!” he howled derisively, “on the beauty and perfection of the Roman Aqueducts while the very roof above us spouted water like a sieve!…Was it the secret of the Sphinx, the sources of the Nile, what songs the sirens sang, the exact year, month, week, day, hour, and moment of the Field of Armageddon with the Coming of the Lord upon the earth, together with all judgments, punishments, rewards, and titles he would mete to us—and particularly to his favored son, the Major!” sneered the boy’s uncle. “Oh, I can assure you, my dear child, he knew about it all! Earth had no mysteries, the immortal and imperturbable skies of time no secrets, the buried and sunken life of the great ocean no strange terrors, nor the last remotest limits of the sidereal universe no marvels which that mighty brain did not at once discover, and would reveal to anyone who had the fortitude to listen!…

  “Meanwhile,” his uncle snarled, “we lived like dogs, rooting into the earth for esculent herbs that we might stay our hunger on, gorging ourselves on wild berries plucked from roadside hedges, finding a solitary ear of corn and hugging it to our breasts as we hurried home with it as if we had looted the golden granaries of Midas, while the Major—the Major—surrounded by the rabble-rout of all his progeny, the youngest of whom crawled and scrambled in their dirty rags about his feet while the great man sat enthroned on the celestial lights of his poetic inspiration, his great soul untainted by all this earthly misery about him, composing verses,” sneered his uncle, “to the lady of his dreams. ‘My lady’s hair!’” he howled derisively. “My lady’s hair!” And for a moment, blind with his gaunt, tortured grimace, he kicked and stamped one leg convulsively at the earth—“Oh, sublime! Sublime!” he howled huskily at length. “To see him there lost in poetic revery—munching the cud of inspiration and the frayed end of a pencil—his eyes turned dreamily upon the distant hills—slowly stroking his luxuriant whiskers with the fingers of those plump white hands of which he was so justly proud!” his uncle sneered—“dressed in his fine black broadcloth suit and white boiled shirt that she—poor, patient, and devoted woman that she was—who never owned a store dress in her whole life—had laundered, starched, and done up for her lord and master with such loving care….

  “My dear child,” he went on in a moment, in a voice that had become so husky, faint, and tremulous that it scarcely rose above a whisper. “My dear, dear child!” he said, “may your life never know the anguish, frenzy, and despair, the hideous mutilations of the soul, that passion of inchoate hatred, loathing, and revulsion, that I felt towards my father—my own father!—with which my own life was poisoned in my youth!—Oh! To see him sitting there so smug, so well-kept and complacent, so invincibly assured in his self-righteousness, with his unctuous, drawling voice of limitless self-satisfaction, his pleased laughter at his own accursed puns and jests and smart retorts, his insatiable delight in all that he—he alone—had ever seen, done, thought, felt, tasted, or believed—perched there on the mountainous summit of his own conceit—while the rest of us were starving—writing poems to his lady’s hair—his lady’s hair—while she, poor woman—that poor, dead, lost, and unsung martyr of a woman that I have the honor to acknowledge as my mother,” he said huskily, “did the drudgery of a nigger as he sat there in his fine clothes writing verses—kept life in us somehow, those of us who managed to survive,” he said bitterly, “when she had so little of her own to spare—scrubbed, sewed, mended, cooked—when there was anything at all to cook—and passively yielded to that sanctimonious lecher’s insatiable and accursed lust—drudging, toiling, drudging to the very moment of our birth—until we dropped full-born out of our mother’s womb even as she bent above her labors at the tub…. Is it any wonder that I came to hate the very sight of him—venerable whiskers, thick lips, white hands, broadcloth, unctuous voice, pleased laughter,
smug satisfaction, invincible conceit, and all the tyranny of his narrow, vain, inflexible, small soul?—why, damn him,” the boy’s uncle whispered huskily. “I have seen the time I could have taken that fat throat and strangled it between my hands, blood, bone, body, father of my life though he might be—oh!” he howled, “damn’bly, indubitably, was!”

  And for a moment his gaunt face burned into the western ranges, far, lost, and lonely in the red light, westering to wintry dark.

  “The Major!” he muttered quietly at length. “You have heard your good Aunt Maw speak, no doubt, about the Major—of his erudition and intelligence, the sanctified infallibility of all his judgments, of his fine white hands and broadcloth clothes, the purity of his moral character, of how he never uttered a profane word, nor allowed a drop of liquor in his house—nor would have let your mother marry your father had he known that your father was a drinking man. That paragon of morals, virtues, purities, and manners—that final, faultless, and inspired judge and critic of all things!—Oh, my dear boy!” he howled faintly, with his husky and contemptuous laugh—“she is a woman—therefore governed by her sentiment; a woman—therefore blind to logic, the evidence of life, the laws of ordered reason; a woman—therefore at the bottom of her heart a Tory, the slave of custom and conformity; a woman—therefore cautious and idolatrous; a woman—therefore fearful for her nest; a woman—therefore the bitter enemy of revolt and newness, hating change, the naked light of truth, the destruction of time-honored superstitions, however cruel, false, and shameful they may be. Oh! she is a woman and she does not know!…