Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge Jr.

  —We’ll get the pictures taken first, Mr. Shawnessy said. Bill’s farm is close. I suppose we’ll have time. Want to go along, Professor?

  —All aspects of farm life interest me, said the Perfessor.

  Leaving the General Store, the three men walked slowly under elms and maples toward the site of the Senator’s birthplace. Peering ahead, Mr. Shawnessy could make out a young man setting up a black box on three legs just beyond the shadetrees at the point where the sidewalk ended.

  He had been entangled in an Old Southern Melodrama, reshuffling memories of war and peace in a lost republic. Time now to find again the everliving present in which a radiant god was zestfully tracing images of forbidden things. With a finger of light, there where the shadow ended, he drew his legend, forever new, forever old—a garden of strange delight where nymphs were hiding nude in balls of shrubbery watching the motions of

  A White Bull

  STOOD in a small pasture a little way from the National Road. On three sides he was imprisoned in barbed wire, on the fourth by a tall iron fence flanking an unseen garden. His large brown eyes were fretful and melancholy. North and south, the July corn was an ocean of soft arms in which he was islanded, a great strength formed for love and strife. Brutely propulsive from tight rump to mounded shoulders, he stood lovetortured peering at a world without depth. He did not know what festive day it was. He did not know what month or year it was. He did not know his name. He did not know that he was bull.

  . . .

  THE REVEREND LLOYD G. JARVEY, shaggily virile, strode back and forth in the little tent beside the Revival Tent. The flap was down. He was alone. Even with his glasses on, he could see nothing clearly except that the sun blazing on the canvas dome filled the tent with a brown mist. Dripping with sweat, back and forth he strode, his eyes glaring savagely with a penned-in, fretful look. Through dull walls he could hear a liquid rush of voices, laughter, wheels. It was a sound like surf beating on an island in which love-tortured a god lay pinioned in a shape of earth.

  . . .

  MRS. EVELINA BROWN stood in the lower hall of her mansion east of Waycross. Looking into her mirror, she saw a gracefully formed woman in a modish green gown with emphasized hip lines. A small green hat perched on her titiancolored hair. Her face was fullcheeked and fair. The large graygreen eyes and finely drawn uplifted brows gave to her face an eager girlish look though there were faint lines on the forehead and in the corners of the eyes. Nose and chin were pert. The mobile, shining mouth had the full under-lip of passion.

  Around her gloomed the brick broad walls of her Victorian home, stocked with twisted chairs, bewildered sofas, sentimental pictures in writhing frames, grotesquely antlered light fixtures, flowersplashed wallpapers, and glassdoored bookcases ranked with gilt volumes of Tennyson, Dickens, Byron, Bulwer-Lytton, Victor Hugo, and a great deal of libertarian literature, calculated to achieve woman’s rightful position in a thoroughly reformed world.

  The house which enclosed her small lonely form looked as if ten different architects had begun work on ten different projects in the same place and had been obliged to reconcile their conflicting designs as best they could. Thin windows pierced thick walls; a green mansard roof looking like elephant rind squatted on the confused pile; ironwork bristled along the eaves. Across the front was a manycolumned verandah. A round tower was rooted obscurely in the gloomy mass. A fence of iron spears enclosed a vast lawn, full of clipped balls of bushes and topiary shapes of bulls, deers, archers, gods. Nymphs stood nude in the shrubbery, castiron buttocks wound in vines. To the rear were a servant’s house and a gardener’s shop, both brickly respectable. In the back part of the lawn was a little summer house, a roofcone on slender columns. In the east front corner of the yard near the road a fountain made a flower of spray over two bronze children, whose naked forms were halfsubmerged in a pond of waterlilies.

  In this house and lawn, Mrs. Evelina Brown, a figure of mystery, had built herself a place apart, from which she looked forth upon a flat world of cornfields and frame houses. In Raintree County, she had constructed something pagan and contrived, an island of wistful feminine aspiration in the corn.

  . . .

  A CHORUS of loud guffs and snorts followed the Senator’s virile remark. The Raintree County Stockbreeders Association withdrew to a respectful distance still savoring the senatorial wit in wheezy chuckles. The Senator, the Perfessor, and Mr. Shawnessy had meanwhile stopped at the site of the Senator’s birthplace, where the Photographer under a hood sighted through his box at a big gnarled halfdead appletree standing in a vacant lot at the edge of town. Drawn up to the curb was an odd hooded wagon with the black legend:

  E. R. ROSS, PHOTOGRAPHER

  Freehaven, Indiana

  —Here it is, the Senator said, hooking his thumbs in his armpits and looking sad.

  —The humble spot of a heroic birth, the Perfessor said, removing his hat.

  —I suppose it was a log cabin, Senator, Mr. Shawnessy said.

  —Matter of fact, it was, the Senator said.

  —Garwood B. Jones, recited the Perfessor, was born in 1835 in a little log cabin, which he built in the year 1892.

  —Some people have no poetic feeling, the Senator said.

  —Now, Garwood, Mr. Shawnessy said, if you’ll just distribute yourself under that tree, this young man will preserve your outline for posterity.

  The Photographer was a pleasant young man with unusual blue eyes, shiny darkbrown hair, and dimples, who did not seem at all disturbed by the confusion in which he worked. People kept coming up and asking him questions about his apparatus, and every now and then, while he was under the hood correcting the focus, a small boy would come up and peer into the lens. Unperturbed, the Photographer waved him away and went on with his work, walking swiftly back and forth from his covered cart to his camera, carrying plates, making adjustments, bobbing in and out of the hood. In this scene, he alone was the artist-contriver as he prepared to trace with a radiant pencil a legend of light and shadow, some faces on the great Road of the Republic.

  . . .

  The flap lifted. A blurred head pushed through the opening. As Preacher Jarvey walked forward to greet the visitor, the head swam into focus, hovering in a vitreous world like a fish seen through a glassbottomed boat.

  Nodding hugely in at the tent flap was the broad bald head of Gideon Root, seen with monstrous precision through the Preacher’s thick lenses.

  —Praise the Lord, Brother Root!

  —Praise the Lord, Brother Jarvey!

  The two big voices filled the tent with a harsh, booming sound. The two big bearded faces wagged solemnly at each other.

  —Brother Root, I am ready to bring these two sinners before the bar of God.

  —When?

  —The Literary Society is havin’ a meetin’ tonight at the home of this errin’ woman, and I have gathered a select group to march in a procession, bearin’ torches. We will apprehend them in the midst of their profane rites.

  —I don’t care how you do it, Brother Jarvey, just so you show this Shawnessy up for the rascal he is. I’m not a wealthy man, but I’ll gladly contribute another hundred dollars to the cause of God in Raintree County if you can pull this thing off.

  —Of course, it would be better, Brother Root, if we caught the guilty pair in flagrante delicto.

  —What’s that, Brother?

  —Brother, that means in the livin’ act. That means couplin’ in lust!

  —I reckon that would be hard to do.

  —Brother, we will have to proceed without the full evidence of things seen, but we have the evidence of things unseen to prove their lustful love. Sister Lorena Passifee, who lives close to the home of this errin’ woman, has observed things and heard things. I have a note from her here to the effect that he was seen in the late hours of last night leavin’ her guilty embrace, and the woman was seen in the nakedness and confusion of her shameless passion. O, Brother Root, lust is a terrible thing. Praise the Lord!<
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  —It is a terrible thing.

  —Hit is a terrible thing, and hit is tenfold more terrible when hit is embodied in the person of a beautiful woman like Sister Brown. Such beauty ought to be bestowed on the altar of God, but, alas! hit is turned aside and polluted by atheistic doctrine and pagan heresy. Praise the Lord!

  —Praise the Lord!

  —O, hit is a dreadful thing, hit is tenfold more dreadful when the seeds of lust are sown in a beautiful garden that ought to have been matured to Christ. I had hoped to save this errin’ female from her fate, but the emissary of Satan in this County, by name John Wickliff Shawnessy, toils day and night to undo the work of God. But their hour has come, Brother Root. Their hour has come. Hosanna!

  —Hosanna!

  —For the Lord will not long permit this sinful dalliance. He will chastise it with a whip of flame. He will requite it with a scourge of fire. Praise the Lord!

  —Praise the Lord, Brother Jarvey. I’m afraid we’ll be heard outside, Brother.

  The monotonous horn of Preacher Jarvey’s voice had begun to blow high and hard, with a more and more rhythmical rise and fall. Now he muted it down to a hoarse whisper.

  —I’m about to go to Sister Passifee’s now, Brother Root, to inquire further into this matter with her. Tonight at eight o’clock I’ll expect you in this tent. There will be some other men of God from this and neighborin’ counties present, who will lend their wrath to ours when we expel these guilty creatures from the nest of their iniquity. Tell you the truth, the local people are not to be relied upon. They worship this scoundrel.

  —I think it best, Brother Jarvey, if I keep kind of in the back.

  —As you say, Brother, as you say.

  Preacher Jarvey lifted the tent flap for Gideon Root and leaning out watched the broad form blur into a mist of green and gold.

  He was alone once more in a craving void. Instantly he hungered to hurl himself upon it with voice and fist and starting eyeball and wrest from it some form of beauty that would still the hunger. Perhaps he could lure it by a savage cry, prolonged like a trumpet blown into the void, and name it into being. . . .

  . . .

  Evelina gave a last pat to her hair. As she turned away, watching her mirror twin sweep large-eyed into a duplicate world, she remembered her dream of the night before. She had lain awake a long time, thinking about many things: her long consultation with Mr. Shawnessy reviewing the last details of the program for the Fourth; the strange letter she had received from Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles; her plans for the day—picture-taking at the Senator’s birthplace, a studied plea to the Senator for aid in obtaining woman suffrage, her chairmanship of the Program of the Day, and arrangements for the picnic of the Literary Society at her home in the evening. When finally she had slept, she had dreamed a wondrous, strange rehearsal of the day to come. Scenes from this dream, forgotten in the excitement of awakening (for she had risen to this day as to a contest), kept rising unexpectedly from limbo and untime, impinging on her day with a quaintly duplicate day in which a stately twin, more daring Evelina, made an immortal progress through the streets of time.

  Carrying her pamphlets in a thin bundle under her arm, she opened the door, stepped forth to the verandah, went down the steps. The day assaulted her with heat, rising in soft globes rolling from the long lawn, shimmering over the cornfield across the road. Bouncing nervously on the springy substance of the path, she walked to the iron gates and into the National Road. Shading her eyes, she looked east into the flagbright Main Street of Waycross lined with wheels, alive with faces. She walked sedately in her peculiar undulant manner feeling the heatflush on her cheeks. A tall man detached himself from a group at the Senator’s birthplace and nodded to her. It was Mr. Shawnessy, his eyes narrowed to slots of liquid blue. She made a little motion with her free arm and smiled. Another man with a huge black book under his arm waved to her and advanced, a tall, distinguished person with hawksharp face and glittering black eyes.

  —Well, well! here she is, the Perfessor said, a figure of beauty and mystery, that very feminine feminist, Evelina!

  Smiling with excitement, she held out her hand to the Perfessor, suddenly remembering . . .

  EVELINA’S DREAM

  She had been dreaming of preparations for a ritual day. Standing before her hallmirror she had put the last touch to her costume, pinning on a feminist pamphlet like a figleaf. When she opened the door, a flood of light and music struck her. Professor Stiles, dressed like a herald, rakethin legs in ceremonial tights, shouted through a megaphone:

  —Introducing, Ladies and Gentlemen, our favorite woman of tomorrow! Mrs. Evelina Brown, that distinguished poetess whose lyrical talents have often embellished our column!

  She stepped to the front of a platform in a vast park ornamented by castiron statuary and surrounded by distant buildings, awesomely hideous and vaguely resembling photographs she had seen of Queen Victoria.

  —Welcome, lords and ladies gay, she said in a thrilling sweet voice. This meeting of all the ladies from Aurora to dewy Eve has been arranged by the Waycross Literary Society to celebrate the completion of a Century of Progress in the attainment of woman’s rightful position. . . .

  Under the old appletree stood Senator Jones, in an authoritatively senatorial pose, left foot out, chest and paunch well forward, head and chin thrown back, hands holding coat lapels, thumbs up.

  The Photographer pressed the bulb. Melting from granite into flesh, the Senator walked over to the road and swept broad hat from freeflowing locks.

  —So this is the little lady who is going to handle the Grand Ceremonies this afternoon! I am honored and charmed to see you again, Mrs. Brown.

  The Perfessor relinquished her hand.

  —You can have it for a while, Senator. But remember, I want it back.

  The Senator enclosed the small hand in his two great hands.

  —It seems years since you were with us in Washington, dear, he said. You haven’t given up the good fight, have you?

  —Not at all, she said. I find I can carry it on here as well as in the Nation’s Capital, that’s all.

  —How lovely you look, dear, the Perfessor said. Don’t you agree, Senator, that Evelina ought to stop wasting all this charm on John and the local plowheads?

  —Indubitably! the Senator said in his mellow bass.

  —Let’s have some more pictures under the appletree, Mr. Shawnessy said to the Photographer. With the lady included.

  —By all means, the Senator said, leading Evelina over to the tree. Come on, Professor and John. You get into it too.

  —May we look admiringly at the lady? the Perfessor asked the Photographer, who had said almost nothing so far.

  —Of course, said the Photographer, ducking under the hood. What else?

  —A perspicacious young man, said the Perfessor. He will go far in his profession.

  Evelina leaned back on the old tree, looking up into the branches, through which the sifted sunlight fell. For a moment, she and the three men became quite still, as the Photographer reappearing from under the hood looked at them with a solicitous expression on his young face and pressed the bulb.

  Their forms fled to the dusky inward of his mysterious box, written with a pencil of light upon a stuff of shadow. All else was lost on the Main Street of Waycross, the color of the thronging, curious faces, the boys with fists of firecrackers, the buggies passing. But in a timeconquering photograph four figures stood: a broad gentleman in a cutback coat with wideflung arm indicative of a tree; a longheaded gentleman in pince-nez dapperly leaning on a cane, the sly beginning of a smile on his thin, dry lips; a darkhaired gentleman with pensive, innocent eyes; herself, a lady in a green dress, hands folded coyly over the figleaf zone, eyes looking wistfully upward at the branches. . . .

  EVELINA’S DREAM

  The Perfessor, leaning forward like a traveling salesman, showed pages from a fashion magazine.

  —Could I interest you, Madame, in the lat
est Stiles? The Goddess Ladies Book, featuring the newest Paris fashions. To the most stunning costume since Eve, we are awarding——

  Mr. Shawnessy appeared with a golden apple in his hand, attired in his usual schoolmaster’s costume. She perceived then that the apple was really the bulb-release of a camera. Mr. Shawnessy was setting up the oddshaped apparatus to take her picture, as she posed in a huge picture frame made of trellised roses.

  —Latest Continental dispatches, he recited, record a breathtaking retrogression to fashions popular in the first centuries of this era. A certain notable lady whose mode of apparel has vitally affected all feminine adornment since her time was the first to adopt this charming ensemble.

  Except for her Princess Eugénie hat, she was posed in entire nudity. With shyly downcast eyes she studied the flow of her wellfleshed thighs and calves to the prim little feet, one slightly advanced and both prettily turned out. There was a flash of rosecolored light, and as the fading fragments floated dreamily around her . . .

  The Photographer closed the shutter.

  —Young man, the Perfessor said, you have made us immortal.

  —Senator, Evelina said, peeling off a pamphlet from the top of her bundle, could I have a word with you?

  —The pleasure is mine, dear, said the Senator, looking at her with eyes of shrewd appraisal. I received your charming letter, by the way.

  —I hope you will come out strongly for woman suffrage in the present campaign, Senator. The Populist Party, as you know, is going to make it a plank in their platform. Surely it’s time that women were conceded equality on this point. If my personal wish can have any weight, I hope you will see fit to raise this great issue above partisanship. A statesman of your stature and popularity would have great weight.

  —At a rough estimate, the Perfessor said, two hundred and fifty pounds.

  —I assure you, Madame, the Senator said, his voice becoming measured and louder, that I shall give this matter every attention within my power.

  —Please take this pamphlet, Evelina said, in which I have summarized a century of striving toward our great goal. Senator, I earnestly beseech you to give us your backing.