You Can't Go Home Again

by Thomas Wolfe

Was never there with Drake's men in the evening when the sails stood in from the Americas! Was never there beneath the Spaniard's swarthy eye at Vincent's Cape! Was never there in the red-oak thicket in the morning! Was never there to hear the war-cries round the Painted Buttes!

  No, no. He was no voyager of unknown seas, no pioneer of western trails. He was life's little man, life's nameless cypher, life's man-swarm atom, life's American--and now he lies disjected and exploded on a street in Brooklyn!

  He was a dweller in mean streets, was Green, a man-mote in the jungle of the city, a resident of grimy steel and stone, a mole who burrowed in rusty brick, a stunned spectator of enormous salmon-coloured towers, hued palely with the morning. He was a renter of shabby wooden houses in a little town, an owner of a raw new bungalow on the outskirts of the town. He was a waker in bleak streets at morning, an alarm-clock watcher, saying: "Jesus, I'll be late."--a fellow who took short cuts through the corner lot, behind the advertising signs; a fellow used to concrete horrors of hot day and blazing noon; a man accustomed to the tormented hodge-podge of our architectures, used to broken pavements, ash-cans, shabby store fronts, dull green paint, the elevated structure, grinding traffic, noise, and streets be-tortured with a thousand bleak and dismal signs. He was accustomed to the gas tanks going out of town, he was an atom of machinery in an endless flow, going, stopping, going to the winking of the lights; he tore down concrete roads on Sundays, past the hot-dog stands and filling-stations; he would return at darkness; hunger lured him to the winking splendour of chop-suey signs; and midnight found him in The Coffee Pot, to prowl above a mug of coffee, tear a coffee-cake in fragments, and wear away the slow grey ash of time and boredom with other men in grey hats and with skins of tallow-grey, at Joe the Greek's.

  C. Green could read (which Drake could not), but not too accurately; could write, too (which the Spaniard couldn't), but not too well. C. Green had trouble over certain words, spelled them out above the coffee mug at midnight, with a furrowed brow, slow-shaping lips, and "Jesus!" when news stunned him--for he read the news. Preferred the news with pictures, too, girls with voluptuous legs crossed sensually, dresses above the knees, and plump dolls' faces full of vacant lechery. Green liked news "hot"--not as Fox knows it, not subtly sniffing with strange-scornful nostrils for the news behind the news--but straight from the shoulder--socko!--biff!--straight off the griddle, with lots of mustard, shapely legs, roadside wrecks and mutilated bodies, gangsters' molls and gunmen's hideouts, tallow faces of the night that bluntly stare at flashlight lenses--this and talk of "heart-balm", "love-thief", "sex-hijacker"--all of this liked Green.

  Yes, Green liked the news--and now, a bit of news himself (nine lines of print in Times), has been disjected and exploded on a Brooklyn pavement!

  Well, such was our friend, C. Green, who read, but not too well; and wrote, but not too easily; who smelled, but not too strongly; felt, but not too deeply; saw, but not too clearly--yet had smelled the tar in May, smelled the slow, rank yellow of the rivers, and the clean, coarse corn; had seen the slants of evening on the hill-flanks in the Smokies, and the bronze swell of the earth, the broad, deep red of Pennsylvania barns, proud-proportioned and as dominant across the fields as bulls; had felt the frost and silence in October; had heard the whistles of the train wail back in darkness, and the horns of New Year's Eve, and--"Jesus! There's another year gone by! What now?"

  No Drake was he, no Spaniard, no coon-skin cap, no strong face burning west. Yet, in some remote and protoplasmic portion, he was a little of each of these. A little Scotch, perhaps, was Green, a little Irish, English, Spanish even, and some German--a little of each part, all compacted and exploded into nameless atom of America!

  No. Green--poor little Green--was not a man like Drake. He was just a cinder out of life--for the most part, a thinker of base thoughts, a creature of unsharpened, coarse perceptions. He was meagre in the hips, he did not have much juice or salt in him. Drake gnawed the beef from juicy bones in taverns, drank tankards of brown ale, swore salty curses through his whiskers, wiped his mouth with the back of his hard hand, threw the beef bone to his dog, and pounded with his tankard for more ale. Green ate in cafeterias, prowled at midnight over coffee and a doughnut or a sugar-coated bun, went to the chop-suey joint on Saturday nights and swallowed chow mein, noodle soup, and rice. Green's mouth was mean and thin and common, it ran to looseness and a snarl; his skin was grey and harsh and dry; his eyes were dull and full of fear. Drake was self-contained: the world his oyster, seas his pastures, mighty distances his wings. His eyes were sea-pale (like the eyes of Fox); his ship was England. Green had no ship, he had a motor-car, and tore down concrete roads on Sunday, and halted with the lights against him with the million other cinders hurtling through hot space. Green walked on level concrete sidewalks and on pavements grey, through hot and grimy streets past rusty tenements. Drake set his sails against the west, he strode the buoyant, sea-washed decks, he took the Spaniard and his gold, and at the end he stood in to the sweet enfoldments of the spire, the clustered town, the emerald fields that slope to Plymouth harbour--then Green came!

  We who never saw brave Drake can have no difficulty conjuring up an image of the kind of man he was. With equal ease we can imagine the bearded Spaniard, and almost hear his swarthy oaths. But neither Drake nor Spaniard could ever have imagined Green. Who could have foreseen him, this cypher of America, exploded now upon a street in Brooklyn?

  Behold him, Admiral Drake! Observe the scene now! Listen to the people! Here is something strange as the Armadas, the gold-laden cargoes of the bearded Spaniards, the vision of unfound Americas!

  What do you see here, Admiral Drake?

  Well, first, a building--your own hotel--such a building as the folk of Plymouth never saw. A great block of masonry, pale-hued, grimy-white, fourteen storeys tall, stamped in an unvarying pattern with many windows. Sheeted glass below, the store front piled with medicines and toilet articles, perfumes, cosmetics, health contrivances. Within, a soda fountain, Admiral Drake. The men in white with monkey caps, soda jerkers sullen with perpetual overdriven irritation. Beneath the counter, pools of sloppy water, filth, and unwashed dishes. Across the counter, Jewesses with fat, rouged lips consuming ice-cream sodas and pimento sandwiches.

  Outside upon the concrete sidewalk lies the form of our exploded friend, C. Green. A crowd has gathered round--taxi-drivers, passersby, hangers-on about the subway station, people working in the neighbourhood, and the police. No one has dared to touch exploded Green as yet--they stand there in a rapt and fascinated circle, looking at him.

  Not much to look at either, Admiral Drake; not even those who trod your gory decks would call the sight a pretty one. Our friend has landed on his head--"taken a nose dive", as we say--and smashed his brains out at the iron base of the second lamp-post from the corner. (It is the same lamp-post as heretofore described, to be found throughout America--a "standard", standardised, supporting five hard grapes of frosted glass.)

  So here Green lies, on the concrete sidewalk all disjected. No head is left, the head is gone now, head's exploded; only brains are left. The brains are pink, and almost bloodless, Admiral Drake. (There's not much blood here--we shall tell you why.) But brains exploded are somewhat like pale sausage meat, fresh-ground. Brains are stuck hard to the lamp-post, too; there is a certain driven emphasis about them, as if they had been shot hydraulically out of a force-hose against the post.

  The head, as we have said, is gone completely; a few fragments of the skull are scattered round--but of the face, the features, forehead--nothing! They have all been blown out, as by some inner explosion. Nothing is left but the back of the skull, which curiously remains, completely hollowed out and vacant, and curved over, like the rounded handle of a walking-stick.

  The body, five feet eight or nine of it, of middling weight, is lying--we were going to say "face downwards"; had we not better say "stomach downwards"?--on the sidewalk. It is well-dressed, too, in cheap, neatly pressed, machine-mad
e clothes: tan shoes and socks with a clocked pattern, suit of a light texture, brownish-red in hue, a neat canary-coloured shirt with attached collar--obviously C. Green had a nice feeling for proprieties! As for the body itself, save for a certain indefinable and curiously "disjected" quality, one could scarcely tell that every bone in it is broken. The hands are still spread out, half-folded and half-clenched, with a still-warm and startling eloquence of recent life. (It happened just four minutes ago!)

  Well, where's the blood, then, Drake? You're used to blood; you'd like to know. Well, you've heard of casting bread upon the waters, Drake, and having it return--but never yet, I'll vow, of casting blood upon the streets--and having it run away--and then come back to you! But here it comes now, down the street--down Apple Street, round the corner into Hay, across the street now towards C. Green, the lamp-post, and the crowd!--a young Italian youth, blunt-featured, low-browed, and bewildered, his black eyes blank with horror, tongue mumbling thickly, arm held firmly by a policeman, suit and shirt all drenched with blood, and face be-spattered with it! A stir of sudden interest in the crowd, sharp nudges, low-toned voices whispering:

  "Here he is! Th' guy that 'got it'!...Sure, that's him--you know him, that Italian kid that works inside in the news-stand--he was standin' deh beside the post! Sure, that's the guy!--talkin' to another guy--he got it all! That's the reason you didn't see more blood--this guy got it!--Sure! The guy just missed him by six inches!--Sure! I'm tellin' you I saw it, ain't I? I looked up an' saw him in the air! He'd a hit this guy, but when he saw that he was goin' to hit the lamp-post, he put out his hands an' tried to keep away! That's the reason that he didn't hit this guy!...But this guy heard him when he hit, an' turned round--and zowie!--he got all of it right in his face!"

  And another, whispering and nudging, nodding towards the horror-blank, thick-mumbling Italian boy: "Jesus! Look at th' guy, will yuh!...He don't know what he's doing!...He don't know yet what happened to him!...Sure! He got it all. I tell yuh! He was standin' deh beside the post, wit a package undehneath one ahm--an' when it happened--when he got it--he just stahted runnin'...He don't know yet what's happened!...That's what I'm tellin' yuh--th' guy just stahted runnin' when he got it."

  And one policeman (to another): "...Sure, I yelled to Pat to stop him. He caught up with him at Borough Hall...He just kept on runnin'--he don't know yet what happened to him."

  And the Italian youth, thick-mumbling: "...Jeez! W'at happened?...Jeez!...I was standin' talkin' to a guy--I heard it hit...Jeez!...W'at happened, anyway?...I got it all oveh me!...Jeez!...I just stahted runnin'...Jeez! I'm sick!"

  Voices: "Here, take 'im into the drug-store!...Wash 'im off!...That guy needs a shot of liquor!...Sure! Take him into the drug-stoeh deh!...They'll fix him up!"

  The plump, young, rather effeminate, but very intelligent young Jew who runs the news-stand in the corridor, talking to everyone round him, excitedly and indignantly: "...Did I see it? Listen! I saw everything! I was coming across the street, looked up, and saw him in the air!...See it?...Listen! If someone had taken a big ripe water-melon and dropped it on the street from the twelfth floor you'd have some idea what it was like!...See it! I'll tell the world I saw it! I don't want to see anything like that again!" Then excitedly, with a kind of hysterical indignation: "Shows no consideration for other people, that's all I've got to say! If a man is going to do a thing like that, why does he pick a place like this--one of the busiest corners in Brooklyn?...How did he know he wouldn't hit someone? Why, if that boy had been standing six inches nearer to the post, he'd have killed him, as sure as you live!...And here he does it right in front of all these people who have to look at it! It shows he had no consideration for other people! A man who'd do a thing like that..."

  (Alas, poor Jew! As if C. Green, now past considering, had considered nice "considerations".)

  A taxi-driver, impatiently: "That's what I'm tellin' yuh!...I watched him for five minutes before he jumped. He crawled out on the window-sill an' stood there for five minutes, makin' up his mind!...Sure, I saw him! Lots of people saw him!" Impatiently, irritably:-"Why didn't we do somethin' to stop him? F'r Chri' sake, what was there to do? A guy who'd do a thing like that is nuts to start with! You don't think he'd listen to anything we had to say, do you?...Sure, we did yell at him!...Jesus!...We was almost afraid to yell at him--we made motions to him to get back--tried to hold his attention while the cops sneaked round the corner into the hotel...Sure, the cops got there just a second after he jumped--I don't know if he jumped when he heard 'em comin', or what happened, but Christ!--he stood there gettin' ready for five minutes while we watched!"

  And a stocky little Czech-Bohemian, who works in the delicatessen-fruit store on the corner, one block down: "Did I hear it! Say, you could have heard it for six blocks! Sure! Everybody heard it! The minute that I heard it, I knew what had happened, too! I come runnin'!"

  People press and shuffle in the crowd. A man comes round the corner, presses forward to get a better look, runs into a-little fat, baldheaded man in front of him who is staring at the Thing with a pale, sweating, suffering, fascinated face, by accident knocks off the little' fat man's straw hat. The new straw hat hits the pavement dryly, the little fat, bald-headed man scrambles for it, clutches it, and turns round on the man who has knocked it off, both of them stammering frantic apologies:

  "Oh, excuse me!...'Scuse me!...'Scuse me!...Sorry!"

  "Quite all right...All right!...All right."

  Observe now, Admiral, with what hypnotic concentration the people are examining the grimy-white facade of your hotel. Watch their faces and expressions. Their eyes go travelling upwards slowly--up--up--up. The building seems to widen curiously, to be distorted, to flare out wedgelike till it threatens to annihilate the sky, overwhelm the will, and crush the spirit. (These optics, too, American, Admiral Drake.) The eyes continue on past storey after storey up the wall until they finally arrive and come to rest with focal concentration on that single open window twelve floors up. It is no jot different from all the other windows, but now the vision of the crowd is fastened on it with a fatal and united interest. And after staring at it fixedly, the eyes come travelling slowly down again--down--down--down--the faces strained a little, mouths all slightly puckered as if something set the teeth on edge--and slowly, with fascinated measurement--down--down--down--until the eyes reach sidewalk, lamp-post, and--the Thing again.

  The pavement finally halts all, stops all, answers all. It is the American pavement, Admiral Drake, our universal city sidewalk, a wide, hard stripe of grey-white cement, blocked accurately with dividing lines. It is the hardest, coldest, cruellest, most impersonal pavement in the world: all of the indifference, the atomic desolation, the exploded nothingness of one hundred million nameless "Greens" is in it.

  In Europe, Drake, we find worn stone, all hollowed out and rubbed to rounded edges. For centuries the unknown lives of men now buried touched and wore this stone, and when we see it something stirs within our hearts, and something strange and dark and passionate moves our souls, and--"They were here!" we say.

  Not so, the streets, the sidewalks, the paved places of America. Has man been here? No. Only unnumbered nameless Greens have swarmed and passed here, and none has left a mark.

  Did ever the eye go seaward here with searching for the crowded sail, with longing for the strange and unknown coasts of Spain? Did ever beauty here come home to the heart and eyes? Did ever, in the thrusting crowd, eye look to eye, and face to face, and heart to heart, and know the moment of their meeting--stop and pause, and be oblivious in this place, and make one spot of worn pavement sacred stone? You won't believe it, Admiral Drake, but it is so--these things have happened on the pavements of America. But, as you see yourself, they have not left their mark.

  You, old Drake, when last your fellow townsmen saw you at the sailing of the ships, walked with the crowd along the quay, past the spire and cluster of the town, down to the cool lap of the water; and from your deck, as you put o
ut, you watched the long, white, fading arm of your own coast. And in the town that you had left were streets still haunted by your voice. There was your worn tread upon the pavement, there the tavern table dented where you banged your tankard down. And in the evening, when the ships were gone, men waited for your return.

  But no return is here among us in America. Here are no streets still haunted by departed men. Here is no street at all, as you knew streets. Here are just our cement Mobways, unannealed by time! No place in Mobway bids you pause, old Drake. No spot in Mob-way bids you hold your mind a moment in reflection, saying: "He was here!" No square of concrete slab says: "Stay, for I was built by men." Mobway never knew the hand of man, as your streets did. Mobway was laid down by great machines, for one sole purpose--to unimpede and hurry up the passing of the feet.

  Where did Mobway come from? What produced it?

  It came from the same place where all our mobways come from--from Standard Concentrated Production Units of America, No. 1. This is where all our streets, sidewalks, and lamp-posts (like the one on which Green's brains are spattered) come from, where all our white-grimy bricks (like those of which your hotel is constructed) come from, where the red facades of our standard-unit tobacco stores (like the one across the street) come from, where our motor-cars come from, where our drug-stores and our drug-store windows and displays come from, where our soda fountains (complete, with soda jerkers attached) come from, where our cosmetics, toilet articles, and the fat, rouged lips of our Jewesses come from, where our soda water, slops and syrups, steamed spaghetti, ice-cream, and pimento sandwiches come from, where our clothes, our hats (neat, standard stamps of grey), our faces (also stamps of grey, not always neat), our language, conversation, sentiments, feelings, and opinions come from. All these things are made for us by Standard Concentrated Production Units of America, No. 1.

  So here we are, then, Admiral Drake. You see the street, the sidewalk, the front of your hotel, the constant stream of motor-cars, the drug-store and the soda fountain, the tobacco store, the traffic lights, the cops in uniform, the people streaming in and out of the subway, the rusty, pale-hued jungle of the buildings, old and new, high and low. There is no better place to see it, Drake. For this is Brooklyn--which means ten thousand streets and blocks like this one. Brooklyn, Admiral Drake, is the Standard Concentrated Chaos No. 1 of the Whole Universe. That is to say, it has no size, no shape, no heart, no joy, no hope, no aspiration, no centre, no eyes, no soul, no purpose, no direction, and no anything--just Standard Concentrated Units everywhere--exploding in all directions for an unknown number of square miles like a completely triumphant Standard Concentrated Blot upon the Face of the Earth. And here, right in the middle--no, that is wrong, for Standard Concentrated Blots don't have a middle--but, if not in the middle, at least right slap-bang out in the open, upon a minute portion of his magnificent Standard Concentrated Blot, where all the Standard Concentrated Blotters can stare at him, and with the brains completely out of him----