Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge Jr.

—And is this Progress?

  —Of a kind, yes.

  —The only real Progress is Progress toward happiness, Mr. Shawnessy said.

  —Man will be happier with these things, the Perfessor said mellowly. Why not? Perhaps with his machines, he can even defeat the laws of economics and have more leisure time and more Pears’ Soap. The Age of Science and the Age of Contraceptives are apparently going to happen together. When women learn to love without fearing the consequences and every man is guaranteed a job by the Government and an equal chance with his fellows, we shall have arrived at the only millennium mankind is likely to have.

  —But man can explore matter as much as he pleases, Mr. Shawnessy said. And he won’t find any happiness in it. Happiness and Progress come only through self-mastery and self-expression broadly interpreted. After all, what is matter, Professor?

  —What is matter? Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles said. A subtle question.

  He thought a while.

  —Matter is that which is there, he said at last.

  —But the thereness of matter is suspect. There why, how, and for whom?

  —Perhaps it’s enough that it’s there, the Perfessor said, and that it’s completely dependable. It’s made out of little bricks that never wear out. What marvellous stuff it is, when you stop to think about it! What beautiful things have come from it! What is the great I Am, finally? It’s the Atom—the impregnable Atom. This little package of invisible strength and tenacity is diversified into somewhat less than one hundred varieties differing in mass. It just so happens that when you pile up a visible quantity of these little fellows, the mass takes on certain humanly perceived properties. Some kinds of atoms have ways of catching onto other kinds of atoms and forming bigger blocks, by which the world is diversified.

  —Is this your God, Professor? Is this the one thing you believe in?

  —Yes, the Perfessor said, getting out his bottle of whiskey and taking a long, strong pull. This I believe in. Matter. Wonderful stuff. Palpable, visible, odorous, audible, tastable matter. From this fountain of coagulated force, all blessings flow.

  —Is matter forceful?

  —I’m probably anticipating someone, the Perfessor said. I always am. Yes, it wouldn’t surprise me if matter is a kind of force. How else can it go on happening except by the eternal exertion of its indestructible force? And the God that sustains it is just this basic, brute, invisible Force. If this God is anything like man, I don’t know it. He doesn’t have to be. All he has to be is Force, beautiful and perpetual Energy!

  —But matter doesn’t really explain anything, Mr. Shawnessy said.

  —What doesn’t it explain, for example?

  —For example, it doesn’t explain matter.

  —Perhaps matter is the First Cause, the Perfessor said. The Beyond Which Nothing.

  —What then are human beings? What is a soul?

  —Men are mirrors of matter. Like a mirror, they are made of matter themselves, but they are matter peculiarly constructed to reflect matter. And when you get two mirrors facing each other, you get the perfect symbol of human society. It’s a self-sustaining world, knowing itself only by its mirror repetitions. But when you shatter these mirrors, their reflected images are gone forever. Mirrors have no memory, and neither in the long run have human lives.

  Mr. Shawnessy smoked quietly and listened to the creaking swing. No sound of singing or exhortation came from the Revival Tent. But the fire was still burning there, and the wind carried a stench like pitch.

  —The human mirror is more lasting than its images, Professor. The real building blocks of the world are those indivisible, mysterious units called minds or souls.

  —Souls? the Perfessor said. I don’t know what that word means.

  —I don’t either, Mr. Shawnessy said. But I have been in contact with what it means.

  —What is a human soul? the Perfessor said. When a man loves a woman, isn’t it a case of two mirrors, one reflecting the other and so itself at the same time? The more you carry about this bland mirror of the ego, presenting it to other mirrors, the more it reflects itself. Narcissus was your only honest lover. One loves only oneself, or a pleasing reflection of oneself in a pond. Who ever loved another person only for that person’s sake? Love is utterly selfish.

  —The noblest love is the intense awareness of another being, Mr. Shawnessy said. Love is the all-important discovery that one is not alone in the world.

  —How well do your own loves illustrate this, John? the Perfessor said. Take, for example, your brief sojourn in Little Old New York. Did you ever find the soul of Laura Golden? Which is perhaps only another way of rephrasing my earlier question. What in the devil did you do up that stair? What the devil did you do there—up there, soul-discoverer?

  —I discovered a soul.

  —And did you love what you discovered?

  Mr. Shawnessy smoked in silence.

  —Confess, boy, it was only the body that you were hunting there—for this woman had somehow persuaded you to believe in the existence of her body, and it became necessary to you, proud and sensitive as you are, to have that body. Matter sought matter; the whirling atoms wished to dance together. And perhaps you wanted it just because you felt that her mask of invitation covered the stony mystery of the Sphinx. Did you ever solve the riddle of that devious woman?

  Mr. Shawnessy smoked in silence.

  —Damn you, boy, the Perfessor said. Tell me this one thing.

  —Professor, your atoms are in a frightful agitation. Why be such an inquisitive mirror? Mirrors are supposed to reflect only what is put before them. Mirrors are passive and obedient. What does it matter to your atoms what my atoms and her atoms perpetrated, lo! these many years ago?

  —That’s what I get for abandoning philosophy for biography, the Perfessor said, leaning back in the swing. But my mirror isn’t really willful. It’s merely reflecting its own agitations. Its old agitations of myrtles and roses, he added, allowing his thought, as he so often did, to deteriorate in a quotation.

  Mr. Shawnessy smoked on, in silence. His cigar had a bitter taste.

  Holding a Visitor’s Guide, he walked on a broad way through the city of an extinct republic. A procession of metropolitan women in murmuring dresses passed on the arms of dandy escorts into the portals of an old theatre. Under the golden languor of the lights, their diminished and receding forms followed the curve of balustrades into a hushed interior from which a music flowed down all the wavering ramparts of the City. Their beckoning hands and painted smiles dissolved by a quaint transition of images into a yard of castiron statuary, walled in by steep cliffs of buildings. A brownstone mansion lay in eternal twilight here on the floor of the aboriginal City, which elsewhere had vanished under mountains of masonry. The parklike yard expanded; it was a place of Exposition. He remembered then how Centennial crowds had filled the park, tidal millions. He had seen the last great rocket rise on its burning tail, had seen it reach the climax of its climb, had seen it burst and shed its petals on the City, had seen it fall and rain upon the City, had seen the City redly lit to its remotest valleys in the night, all fading in the night—and all its naked streets and mournful walls disclosed.

  Well, then, what was I seeking in the City? I came to the City a vagrant day. And I sought in the City one who vanished in a dream.

  But now and then I must return and find my way upstairs to a chamber on the third floor. I pause at the landing, and looking down, I see around me once again the City, a winking world of shadow, and on the hollow street a footfall sounds. It is a late hour, after the ball is over, and the dancers are gone. And so I wait up there for someone in whose existence I believed. And this, all this, was long ago, a legend of the City.

  Ascend the stair again, lost one, far from home and Raintree County. The Republic has many republics, and the City has many cities. Love has a thousand loves, and passion is a dream of mirrors. What was it that you wanted at the stairhead, and what did you find when you were t
here?

  Ascend, ascend the stair, lost dreamer drowned in urban days. For you were drowned in chambers of the City, your innocence was wasted in a yellow flare of passion before the gaslamp of your City days expired.

  Go back, dear boy, and make your lonely try again. Is there something more impenetrable than the substance of the atom? Is there a chamber of yourself that will always be locked against you, unless, unless, unless . . .

  Go back. The noises of the night rise from the winking roofworld of the City, the vapors of the night are risen from the harbor, and in the slums the sleepers all are sleeping. Go back, and wait, while in a lavish chamber of the City, you hear again a calling of your name.

  Along the Pennsylvania Railroad, a train passed in the darkness, crying. It was the old sound of farewell and of recall to Raintree County. It was the most memorable sound of his life, receding down dark lanes of memory into the West. Its voice at the crossing was like a calling of his name, calling, recalling him to him. He listened to its lonely and diminishing cry in sadness, remembering a severance of himself from herself. Arrival and departure and farewell! Union and reunion! A train had passed in the darkness, crying.

  —The sound of this century, said the Perfessor, is the wail of a train whistle at the crossing. In this lone vowel of sorrow and farewell, the Nineteenth Century has its perfect poem.

  The train had been a passenger express. Mr. Shawnessy had seen in the rhythmic flow of its windows the motionless yet moving images of passengers across the night.

  Eternal passengers across the plain, Americans, travellers to cities on the plain, hail and farewell!

  Farewell to all passengers on the trains of America, fixed in the yellow frames of windows and passing in the night. To all passengers from dawn to sorrow, to all young men from cities returning to their homes, hail and farewell.

  To all days and ways of living in cities of the East, to lone awakenings in the great City where men are lost like atoms in the astral void, farewell.

  To mansions on the old brick streets, to stairways leading up to moonlight landings, to hearts that beat a lonely drum in the hollow chambers of the night, to all the sleepers in the lonely beds, to all the sleepers in the unlonely beds, to all the City’s twilight rooms, farewell.

  To a woman of the City, Laura recumbent in my gilded years, farewell, hail and farewell!

  Some part of me I left, always a wanderer in cities.

  Go some night to the squares where the girls come out and walk, or to the station where the trains are changing, go some day along the narrow way between the milelong walls of factories, and see if you can find him—this lost wanderer. For I left him to wander in the City, a lonely Gentleman from Indiana with a shy and winning smile. Perhaps you will hear his hollow footfalls in your dreams, and awakening, you may rush to the window and push aside the heavy drapes and hear his retreating footsteps in the dawn.

  Remember him in the afterfollowing years whenever you board a train and go across America. Look for his face among the faces of the crowd and for his affectionate smile. Remain a little the sentimentalist of life, life’s young American, as he was.

  Remember him whenever the boats are putting out to sea from harbors and the wind strains at the skirts of pretty girls along the harbor and the tides are setting strong against the shore. Remember him when the clockface in the tallest tower of the City tells you that time is running out to darkness. Remember him in your awakenings just before darkness dissolves into the dawn. For he is still there among the faces of your City, he is a legend of your City, and in this legend you have a part, eternal actress of yourself, who succeeded in your greatest role by means of failure.

  Remember him in the hot summers of your City and in its sudden and bright springs. Remember him in the fabric of its years, for the legend of his days in the City is twisted with your own. Remember him when you are old, and he is gone, and remember that he believed in the existence and reality of you and of the world that you two fashioned together.

  Remember him, for he will remember you. Perhaps you learned to find him too, by losing him. Remember that you two lost each other then, but will find each other in some later century of the City (or some earlier perchance) wherever and whenever a traveller gets down from the train to find the face of one who loved him waiting in the station.

  —The sound of the train, the Perfessor said, his voice hoarser but his mood more mellow as he watched Mrs. Brown and the children hanging Japanese lanterns around the lawn, is the sound of time. No generation was ever so time-conscious as our own.

  —We Americans, Mr. Shawnessy said, always have watches in our hands. We’re always rushing to that rendezvous at the far end of the tracks—an appointment with Progress.

  —But where, finally, the Perfessor said, are these trains taking us? Where are we going on schedule, keeping abreast of the ticking minutes? Well, I will tell you, lost boy, soul-discoverer. We are going back to the earth.

  —So we are, Mr. Shawnessy said, knowing that as usual his meaning was the same and subtly different.

  —The earth, said the Perfessor (who drunk or sober was never afraid to be rhetorical—his profound advantage as a conversationalist), the one great mother of us all. We have no other, when the tale is told, except the earth. From dust we sprang and unto dust return. Children of dust, feeders on dust, lovers of dust, fathers of dust, sleepers in dust. I’m not sure that men resist this idea as much as they pretend. Men desire what is natural, and nothing is more natural than to die. Life’s a restlessness of unstable compounds that long for the stability of death. Perhaps all desire is really for death. The act of love’s a burial whose afterfruit is sadness, a fierce desire to quell desire. And earth is the great bed where all sickness is unsickened and every lust is cooled.

  —But doesn’t this thought make you unhappy, Professor? Do you really want to die?

  With a festive gesture, the Perfessor tossed the empty bottle over the side of the porch where it landed in some bushes.

  —Life is sorrow, he said. And death is a stoppage of sorrow. Why then be sorry to die?

  Where every sickness is unsickened and every lust is cooled.

  —I think it’s likely, the Perfessor said, that all the myths of homecoming are really symbols of death. If I took up teaching school again, I’d teach only one thing—resignation to death. By the way, what did I do with my heart pills?

  The Perfessor fumbled in his pockets and pulled out the other bottle.

  —I will tell you a secret, he said. Perhaps because I’m drunk.

  The Perfessor did something that Mr. Shawnessy hadn’t seen him do all day long. He removed his glasses and breathed on them. His face acquired a childlike, defenseless look while he carefully polished the lenses with a silk handkerchief.

  —Years ago, he said, I was a child in Raintree County.

  He paused as if the words just said were full of labyrinthine meanings.

  —My father had died before I was old enough to remember him. When I was only ten years old, my mother died. In that death, Jerusalem Webster Stiles knew the secret of life—which is death—and never after added to his wisdom though he added to his words. And with that act, also, he left Raintree County and went East, where he had roots. Now, as you know, he came back to Raintree County when he was a young man, but he never came back home. He learned early, with the bitterness of the homeless child, that the earth cares nothing for our grief, and that even our mother who cared for us in life cares nothing for us in death. We care for her and keep her image alive in our brief world of memory and grief, but she doesn’t care for us any longer. She has forgotten us. She doesn’t remember our face.

  —Your mother, Mr. Shawnessy said. You never mentioned her before. You remember her—clearly?

  —My mother, the Perfessor said amiably, was a tall, thin woman in a black dress. She had a sharp, sweet voice. She knew the Bible backwards and made me memorize all the popular passages. I went to church every Sunday and to prayer mee
tings during the week. I spouted verses at the drop of a hat, being considered a prodigy. I hated God, and I think he hated me. We never got along together.

  The Perfessor took another drink.

  —My mother, he said, had a kind smile and a wistful look around the mouth. She meant I should be a preacher and praise God. She was very stiff and terrible in her coffin, and they buried her at noon on a summer’s day. I remember this like yesterday. I wept so many pints of tears that the well has been dry ever since. Sometimes, I try to cry to see whether I can or not. I make a very impressive racket—but no tears. The bucket comes up empty. After her death, they kept trying to get me to recite Bible verses, saying it would get me over my grief. I went East with relatives and became slowly the pitiful, harmless creature that you behold today. This is the autobiography of Jerusalem Webster Stiles, which may be said to have ended when he was ten years old.

  —If you could only cry, Professor, you might recover your faith in life.

  —What is there to cry about? the Perfessor said. When you have known all grief and learned all wisdom at the age of ten?

  —But you loved your mother?

  —Yes, I suppose I did, the Perfessor said. But when I came back to the County years later, I found no trace of her except her grave, and I felt no desire to dig that up again.

  —So you believe that the dead are utterly and forever gone?

  —This I believe, the Perfessor said, and I assure you that once you accept this wisdom and give up to it entirely, you get peace. You lose your vanity and most of your vexations. Nothing is left of the dead but earth. Can you refute this wisdom?

  —Perhaps I can.

  —And how will you do it, hero boy?

  —By the legend of my life, with which I refute all sophistries. By a myth of homecoming and a myth of resurrection.

  Come back to Raintree County, wandering child. Remember the great deaths and the great homecomings. Come back, and bring a sprig of lilac. For you will always be on trains and coming home, and the legend that recalled you from the City will always be tingling along the wires of the Republic.