Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge Jr.

  More confused by Garwood’s generosity than by the heckling of the crowd, John Shawnessy launched into his speech.

  Neither speech was quoted in the papers next day. The words which John Shawnessy had carefully prepared were cast like little seeds on the silence and enigma of hundreds of attentive faces young and old. He never knew where the words fell, and where, if anywhere, they took root. He spoke in a calm, serious voice, and there was no applause for anything that he said, except at the end. The Independent Candidate preserved no copy of the address after he made it, deciding that as a political speech it was a failure.

  It may have been a great utterance, to set beside the Gettysburg Address and the Sermon on the Mount. Or, again, it may have been a rather stilted and, in the light of the times, pointless performance. Its immediate effect could be easily calculated in the voting statistics of the following day. As for its ultimate effect, perhaps some seed of all its words lodged in the memory of an admiring child and was carried devious ways to a more receptive day. John Shawnessy never knew about that.

  But in later years, a good many people who had been very young in 1872, some only children, remembered the speech. And as time passed, an impression grew that it had been a marvellous speech, full of wisdom and high sentence. People often said that they wished they had a copy of it.

  —That was a humdinger of a speech, they said, the best I ever heard, now that I think back.

  But they couldn’t quote a single sentence from it. The lost speech was like the secret of the County’s mysterious naming; and it took its place among the riddles and legends of Raintree County, as ’That Speech John Shawnessy Made in the Court House Square in Seventy-Two.’

  As for the Election itself, the next day after the great debate Garwood’s machine got busy and went to town. Garwood himself admitted that his campaign fund bought five thousand cigars and one hundred barrels of beer for distribution on Election Day. The biggest town in the Congressional District, Middletown, which was beginning to boast an industrial middle class, went solidly Republican. Garwood’s machine voted blocks of five all day long—paid votes marked under the vigilant inspection of Garwood’s heelers and dutifully held aloft in squads of five until they reached the box. Apparently, the voting American of 1872 preferred a cigar stuck in his face to a halo crammed down on his cranium. He went to the polls puffing on Garwood’s cigar and pleasantly exhilarated by Garwood’s beer and voted overwhelmingly for Garwood—two or three times when possible.

  There was some small consolation for the Independent Candidate. Although he was soundly defeated in the total vote, by some miracle he carried Raintree County proper by one ballot, which he afterwards laughingly remarked must have been his own.

  But the verdict of the polls was decisive, and John Shawnessy never returned to the political arena. He had been rejected by his people and called a false prophet. He had come down into the Court House Square from the wilderness where he had searched his soul somewhat longer than the scriptural forty days. But as Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles remarked to him in a letter written during that time, Jesus Christ himself couldn’t have achieved the notoriety of a crucifixion in post-War America. So pocketing his disappointment and pondering his latest epic gesture, John Shawnessy went back to teaching the school children in Shawmucky Township the rudiments of what is known as education.

  Enlivened by this single public appearance, his post-War years fled by, and the Republic went on building great fortunes for a few men, swelling up with immigrant millions, pouring westward, multiplying railroads, mining, rending, ravaging the earth, fighting Indians, planting the plains, loving, raising children, dying. And John Shawnessy went on writing, musing, speculating, and preparing, as confidently as ever, for the day when he would complete his task and become the epic poet of his people.

  During this time, his face was one of the lost faces of the Republic. It underwent imperceptible changes, aging a little, becoming perhaps a little more gentle, having perhaps a little less of the young arrogance of earlier days. And there were unnumbered faces of school children during those fading years (lost faces like his own and changing) that beheld his face and had some memory of it. And perhaps in those silent years there may have been planted in the obscure womb of time a future flower, a wondrous affirmation of life, some love more passionate and true than he had dreamed. He couldn’t say as to that, but went on with his teaching, wondering the while whether he taught anything that was really meaningful and whether he would ever leave his mark on Raintree County in a significant way, or whether he would be taken back into its indifferent earth, like all the other little flowers, even as these withering years were taken one by one back into the watery grave of time while the Republic roared to the end of its first century as an independent nation.

  And as the year 1876 approached, the Centennial Year in which the Fledgling of the Nations would complete the first one hundred years of its existence, John Shawnessy, stirred by deep currents of unrest and aspiration and having now completed a sizeable quantity of manuscript, decided that the time had come to do what he had always intended to do, before his youth was gone. So it was that at last he hearkened to the urgings of Professor Stiles, who had become a famous topical poet, newspaper columnist, and special reporter on Life in New York City. In July of the Centennial Summer, he took a few personal belongings, the manuscript of his unfinished poem, and some money that he had painfully saved, and entraining at Beardstown on the Pennsylvania line,

  BADE FAREWELL TO HIS MOTHER AND FATHER

  AND A SMALL GATHERING

  OF

  —FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS, the Senator said, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.

  Standing on the rear platform, flanked by his secretaries and press-agents, the Senator leaned down out of his statesman’s mask to clasp Mr. Shawnessy’s hand. For a second, his eyes looked kindness and concern.

  —Well, sprout, finish that great book, he said, and if you ever get to the Nation’s Capital, look me up.

  Mr. Shawnessy, moved by an unexpected rush of feeling, clung a moment to the Senator’s plump hand.

  —Good-by, Garwood, I——

  Just then, the train trembled along its length. Instantly the Senator straightened up, leaned back into his greatbellied costume, his face became fixed in the same smile that he had worn in the morning, his storeteeth clenched the unlit cigar, he raised his arms, he began to bow massively. The train started.

  Dipping, diminishing, receding, Senator Garwood B. Jones, framed in the hindend of a passenger train, gradually lost precision. It was a little melancholy and oppressive to think of the grinning mask of a certain eminent statesman in his frock coat and black Lincoln tie getting tinier and tinier in the immense plain of the year 1892.

  The last curious members of the crowd loitered in the Station, sniffing the lingering aroma of greatness, and then left. The Perfessor and Mr. Shawnessy went back to the bench and sat down.

  —Something I’ve never understood, the Perfessor said, is how trains keep from running into each other oftener than they do. If Cash Carney’s train is on time—and you say it is—it should be running into Garwood’s train any time now.

  —It’s all done with wires, Mr. Shawnessy said. And dispatchers.

  Inside the Station, the single live cell of the telegraph key fluttered endlessly on.

  —Wonder what they’re transmitting there? the Perfessor said.

  Mr. Shawnessy, who had learned the code during the War, listened, laughed, and read aloud,

  —‘ARE YOU FOR THAT WINDBAG?’ ‘HELL, NO. ARE YOU?’ ‘HELL, NO.’ The tower men are talking to each other, he explained. ‘NEVER FORGAVE HIM FOR CHEATING US IN ’77.’ ‘HOW’S WIFE?’ ‘O.K.’ ‘NEW KID?’ ‘DOING O.K.’ ‘NAME YET?’ ‘WAIT. SENATOR’S TRAIN PASSING.’

  —The Republic has a voice, the Perfessor said.

  There was a silence on the keys. Then:

  —‘SENATOR WAVED AT SMALL CROWD. KID’S NAME GROVER CLEV
ELAND.’ ‘HOW’S BILL?’ ‘GONE TO CHICAGO. WORK ON FAIRGROUNDS.’

  —By the way, the Perfessor said, I plan to go up and see the Fairgrounds at Chicago. The work’s pretty well along, I hear.

  —How long since you’ve seen Cash?

  —Year or two.

  —The telegram says Laura may come too. Is she still pretty?

  —There’s a sort of ripe splendor about her now. It’s still a gorgeous looking edifice. Too bad she hasn’t acted since her marriage. Well, poor Cash finally made the grade. Her beauty was rolled for an old man’s gold.

  The Perfessor looked keenly at Mr. Shawnessy.

  —All right, come clean, he said. Did you or didn’t you? After all, it was so long ago.

  Mr. Shawnessy smiled in embarrassment.

  —I’ve forgotten all that, he said, lying. As you say, it was all so long ago.

  —I don’t know why I ask such dumb questions, the Perfessor said. Must excite you to think that she may be on this train.

  —It’s strange, Mr. Shawnessy said. You never know who’s going to get down from a train. During my sojourn in the big City, I used to go down to the biggest terminal in town and just stand in the station watching people get on and off, as if I were waiting for someone.

  —Did the party ever come?

  —No, not exactly, Mr. Shawnessy said. The truth is, I’ve never lost that feeling of excitement about incoming trains. And I have the same feeling when I get off a train. It’s as though I were young again and about to step into the middle of a wonderful adventure, as if the crowds of the City would pick me up and bear me off on a floodtide of fulfillment.

  —John, the Perfessor said, you’re an incurable idealist. As for me, I’ve gotten out of too many trains in my time. I always look for the nearest toilet.

  —Speaking of the Fair, Mr. Shawnessy said, remember the Centennial Fourth in Philadelphia?

  —What a day! the Perfessor said. Remember my monolithic blonde?

  —Sure. What ever happened to her?

  —Don’t ask me, the Perfessor said. Her price went up right after that. The Great American Blonde, I think we called her. Sixteen years ago, by the way. Exactly. To the day. Well, we had some life left in us then, boy. Ah, I can see the sunshine now on her corncolored hair and the little railway that took us around the Fairgrounds. That surely was one of the hottest days in the history of the Republic. And those godawful buildings chockful of third-rate canvas and big glittering machines. The Centennial Exposition! Tell me the truth, John, did that ever happen? By the way, her name was Phoebe.

  Her name was Phoebe, and that was sixteen years ago. And her name was Laura Golden, and that was sixteen years ago. The price went up right after that. In America, the price kept rising all the time.

  —We’re always having fairs, the Perfessor said. And they keep on moving West. New York, Philadelphia, and now Chicago. A few years from now, you can probably meet me in St. Louis. And then they’ll go clear out to San Francisco, and then start all over again. And each time they’ll build bigger buildings and sell more bellyaches.

  —But the blondes will be the same as ever, Mr. Shawnessy said.

  —Yes, but the price keeps rising all the time, the Perfessor said. It’s awful what you have to pay these days for the bare necessities of life. Are you the way I am? I remember everything by the women I’ve had. And it’s a good thing I have a retentive memory.

  —I remember things the same way, Mr. Shawnessy said. If I wasn’t in love, I wasn’t alive.

  —Of course, I generally paid my way, the Perfessor said. You idealists are the real thieves of love. In a business civilization like our own, everything should have a price.

  —It all had its price, Mr. Shawnessy said. The tags just weren’t marked in advance. I paid my way too, but with a different coin.

  Meet me in Philadelphia, or New York, or in Chicago. Meet me in St. Louis. Meet me at the Fair. Hotdog, mister? Buy the lady a pink lemonade, mister. And here’s a flower for your coat lapel.

  Meet me in the City of Brotherly Love (and Sisterly Reserve), meet me in the station where the faces pour out smiling from the hollow cars forever. I shall be waiting for you there. We shall catch a horsedrawn car and go through crowded streets and find again the city of the lost, exciting domes, archaic domes beside a river.

  O, shall we live again the birthday of a nation, shall we walk again beside the river, shall I yearn again to touch my lips to yours in the City of the Love of Brothers (and the shy reserve of sisters)? O, shall you ever meet me, meet me at the Fair?

  O, shall we ever find again green pinnacles beside the river, that were new as the shining new republic, and yet no sooner built than old—old, old incredibly—the oldest minarets in all the world, the buildings of the oldest fair that ever was, in the oldest of all the Raintree Counties?

  Come back, come back, to that most crude of Raintree Counties, come back to that great fair. O, meet me, meet me once again, and let us walk again, retracing all our paths, and finding others that we never dared to take. O, let us saunter down the Avenue of the Republic and see the brave exhibits.

  And you will have your green dress on, asserted by a saucy bustle, the floating island of your parasol will ride on rivers of exultant heat. O, you will be the stateliest exhibition of all the exhibitions.

  O, meet me at the Fair, and let us walk together, arm in arm. What have we builded here beside the river in a hundred years? And is everything marked with a price-tag, including you?

  O, inventory of progress, o, general store of humanity, I passed your loaded counters one day of ancient summer. I hunted love and wisdom in the guidebook of Centennial Summer. I studied maps of cities that are gone. Babylon was fair, and they say the walls were built to last forever. But Babylon is not more buried in Ozymandian sands than the city by the river in the summer of the Fair.

  My God, do no trains run backward, and no clocks counterclockwise? O, let us have dispatchers that make the trains of sixteen years ago run into stations of sixteen years ago, and punctual on the hour.

  O, great Dispatcher of the Cosmic Trains, Arranger of the time schedules of the Republic, Deviser of smoothly running overland expresses, do no trains run backward and no clocks counterclockwise?

  —Say, what’s holding up the eastbound express? the Perfessor said to the head of the station agent jutting from the window.

  —Hot box in the Roiville siding, the agent said. She’ll be along in a few minutes.

  She’ll be along, and then we’ll go together to the Fair. For they had great fairs in ancient days, that aspiring and erecting people. They built so big they dwarfed all buildings ever built, and yet they never could build big enough. They built a thousand rooms and filled them full of dolls and clocks and pots and arrowheads, typewriters, sewing machines, kitchenware, steam engines, Krupp guns, locomotives, harvesters, telephones, livestock, paintings. But they left something out.

  It must have been a dream that I was dreaming. It must have been a huge, disordered dream that rose from the little brick womb of Independence Hall in the middle of the City.

  Tom Jefferson, John Adams, John Hancock, George Washington, Ben Franklin, come back, you ancient flingers of democratic seed, behold the thing you did. Behold the buildings out of buildings, behold the words erected out of words, the faces out of faces.

  John Adams, and John Hancock, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Tom Jefferson, old fathers, founders of myself and founders of us all, come back and see the city on the river, the City of the Love of Brothers (and of the silent and the sweet reserve of sisters), come back and meet me, meet me, meet me

  July 4—1876

  ON THE MORNING THAT AMERICA WAS A HUNDRED YEARS OLD

  John Shawnessy awoke in a hotel room in Philadelphia, to the sound of guns saluting the sunrise of the Centennial Day. He awoke with a sensation of jubilant aloneness and independence, as if he and the Republic had been reborn together.

  He went to the window and looked
down on Philadelphia. The street, fragrant with the horsy summer smell of the City and empty of people at this early hour, looked like a vaudeville backdrop. Every doorstep, sign, cigarstore Indian, scrap of paper, cigarbutt, burst firecracker was bathed in a painted stillness. But soon hooves would be clanging on the cobbles, horsecars would go clattering by, surf of human voices would batter him with an old excitement that was always new. And somewhere at the farthest end of the wide and sleepy street of summer, eastward on a fabled water, lifting fair banners to the day, the Centennial City waited.

  By the time he reached the train station at eight o’clock, the streets were jammed with people. Two hundred thousand Americans had come to Philadelphia for the great Fourth of July Celebration.

  From the sunlight of the morning, he stepped into the depot. Out of this vast brown shell, webbed with girders, filled with the sound of trains arriving and departing, faces gushed endlessly to sunlight. In tides they had been moving toward this appointment in the Centennial City. They had won through. They were the most fortunate beings who ever lived. They had come out beside the river in the dawn of the Nation’s second century. Each one had a name, wore clothing, had paid the price of a ticket on the railroad. And each one clutched a guidebook to assure his safety in the City.

  He found a bench and sat waiting for the train from New York, and to while away the time glanced through a letter that he had received just before leaving Raintree County.

  Dear John,

  Meet me in the City of Brotherly Love (and Sisterly Reserve) on the morning of the Fourth. I’ll arrive at eight o’clock on the Centennial Special from New York, not unaccompanied. Wear shoes, country boy. Ladies (by an enlargement of the term) will be present.

  Remember that actress you almost met in Washington eleven years ago? Perhaps—what with the long gap in our correspondence—I have omitted to tell you that that young lady—then known as Daphne Fountain—is today none other than the celebrated Laura Golden, whose name and fame (and shame) have surely penetrated even to the borders of Raintree County. Well, I’ve always regretted that the assignation of that far-off day was never assignated, and I have put a flea in her ear for you, my boy, hoping that she may do something for you in the Big City. She’s being beaued about the town these days by—among others—your old friend and mine, that distinguished financier, Mr. Cassius P. U. Carney. They’re planning to come with me, and I’m bringing a little creature comfort of my own.