OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  WHAM!

  SMASH!

  --Now! God-dam, let her have it! Wow-w!

  With slamming roar, hoarse waugh, and thunderbolted light, the southbound train is gone in one projectile smash of wind-like fury, and the open empty silence of its passing fills us, thrills us, stills us with the vision of Virginia in the moonlight, with the dream-still magic of Virginia in the moon.

  And now, as if with recollected force, the train gains power from the train it passed, leaps, gathers, springs beneath them, smashes on with recollected demon's fury in the dark . . .

  With slam-bang of devil's racket and God-dam of curse--give us the bottle, drink, boys, drink!--the power of Virginia lies compacted in the moon. To you, God-dam of devil's magic and slam-bang of drive, fire-flame of the terrific furnace, slam of rod, storm-stroke of pistoned wheel and thunderbolt of speed, great earth-devourer, city-bringer--hail!

  To you, also, old glint of demon hawk-eyes on the rail and the dark gloved hand of cunning--you, there, old bristle-crops!--Tom Wilson, H. F. Cline, or T. J. Johnson--whatever the hell your name is--

  CASEY JONES! Open the throttle, boy, and let her rip! Boys, I'm a belly-busting bastard from the State of old Catawba--a rootin' tootin' shootin' son-of-a-bitch from Saw Tooth Gap in Buncombe--why, God help this lovely bastard of a train--it is the best damned train that ever turned a wheel since Casey Jones's father was a pup--why, you sweet bastard, run! Eat up Virginia!--Give her the throttle, you old goggle-eyed son-of-a-bitch up there!--Pour it to her! Let 'er have it, you nigger-Baptist bastard of a shovelling fireman--let 'er rip!--Wow! By God, we'll be in Washington for breakfast!

  --Why, God bless this lovely bastard of a train! It is the best damned train that ever pulled a car since Grant took Richmond!--Which way does the damn thing go?--Pennsylvania?--Well, that's all right! Don't you say a word against Pennsylvania! My father came from Pennsylvania, boys, he was the best damned man that ever lived--He was a stone-cutter and he's better than any son-of-a-bitch of a plumber you ever saw--He's got a cancer and six doctors and they can't kill him!--But to hell with going where we go!--We're out to see the world, boy!--To hell with Baltimore, New York, Boston! Run her off the God-damn rails! We're going West! Run her through the woods--cross fields--rivers, through the hills! Hell's pecker! But I'll shove her up the grade and through the gap, no double-header needed!--Let's see the world now! Through Nebraska, boy! Let's shove her through, now, you can do it!--Let's run her through Ohio, Kansas, and the unknown plains! Come on, you hogger, let's see the great plains and the fields of wheat--Stop off in Dakota, Minnesota, and the fertile places--Give us a minute while you breathe to put our foot upon it, to feel it spring back with the deep elastic feeling, 8,000 miles below, unrolled and lavish, depthless, different from the East.

  Now Virginia lay dreaming in the moonlight! And on Florida's bright waters the fair and lovely daughters of the Wilsons and the Potters; the Cabots and the Lowells; the Weisbergs and O'Hares; the Astors and the Goulds; the Ransoms and the Rands; the Westalls and the Pattons and the Webbs; the Reynolds and McRaes; the Spanglers and the Beams; the Gudgers and the Blakes; the Pedersons and Craigs--all the lovely daughters, the Robinsons and Waters, the millionaires' sweet daughters, the Boston maids, the Beacon Slades, the Back Bay Wades, all of the merchant, lawyer, railroad and well-moneyed grades of Hudson River daughters in the moon's bright living waters--lay dreaming in the moonlight, beaming in the moonlight, seeming in the moonlight, to be dreaming to be gleaming in the moon.

  --Give 'em hell, son!

  --Here, give him another drink!--Attaboy! Drink her down!

  --Drink her down--drink her down--drink her down--damn your soul--drink her down!

  --By God, I'll drink her down and flood the whole end of Virginia, I'll drown out Maryland, make a flood in Pennsylvania--I tell you boys I'll float 'em, I'll raise 'em up, I'll bring 'em down stream, now--I mean the Potters and the Waters, the rich men's lovely daughters, the city's tender daughters, the Hudson river daughters--

  Lay dreaming in the moonlight, beaming in the moonlight, to be seeming to be beaming in the moonlight moonlight moonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight.

  And Virginia lay dreaming in the moon.

  Then the moon blazed down upon the vast desolation of the American coasts, and on all the glut and hiss of tides, on all the surge and foaming slide of waters on lone beaches. The moon blazed down on 18,000 miles of coast, on the million sucks and scoops and hollows of the shore, and on the great wink of the sea, that ate the earth minutely and eternally. The moon blazed down upon the wilderness, it fell on sleeping woods, it dripped through moving leaves, it swarmed in weaving patterns on the earth, and it filled the cat's still eye with blazing yellow. The moon slept over mountains and lay like silence in the desert, and it carved the shadows of great rocks like time. The moon was mixed with flowing rivers, and it was buried in the heart of lakes, and it trembled on the water like bright fish. The moon steeped all the earth in its living and unearthly substance, it had a thousand visages, it painted continental space with ghostly light; and its light was proper to the nature of all the things it touched: it came in with the sea, it flowed with the rivers, and it was still and living on clear spaces in the forest where no men watched.

  And in woodland darkness great birds fluttered to their sleep--in sleeping woodlands strange and secret birds, the teal, the nightjar, and the flying rail went to their sleep with flutterings dark as hearts of sleeping men. In fronded beds and on the leaves of unfamiliar plants where the tarantula, the adder, and the asp had fed themselves asleep on their own poisons, and on lush jungle depths where green-golden, bitter red and glossy blue proud tufted birds cried out with brainless scream, the moonlight slept.

  The moonlight slept above dark herds moving with slow grazings in the night, it covered lonely little villages; but most of all it fell upon the unbroken undulation of the wilderness, and it blazed on windows and moved across the face of sleeping men.

  Sleep lay upon the wilderness, it lay across the faces of the nations, it lay like silence on the hearts of sleeping men; and low upon lowlands, and high upon hills, flowed gently sleep, smooth-sliding sleep--sleep--sleep.

  --Robert--

  --Go on to bed, Gene, go to bed now, go to bed.

  --There's shump'n I mush shay t'you--

  --Damn fool! Go to bed!

  --Go to bed! I'll go to bed when I'm God-damn good and ready! I'll not go to bed when there's shump'n I mush shay t'you--

  --Go on to bed now, Gene. You've had enough.

  --Creasman, you're a good fellow maybe but I don't know you. . . . You keep out of this. . . . Robert. . . . I'm gonna tell y' shump'n. . . . You made a remark t'night I didn' like--Prayin' for me, are they, Robert?

  --You damn fool!--You don't know what you're talkin' 'bout! Go on to bed!--

  --I'll go to bed, you bastard--I got shump'n to shay t'you!--Prayin.' for me, are yuh?--Pray for yourself, y' bloody little Deke!

  --Damn fool's crazy! Go on to bed now--

  --I'll bed yuh, you son-of-a-bitch! What was it that y' said that day?--

  --What day? You damned fool, you don't know what you're saying!

  --I'll tell yuh what day!--Coming along Chestnut Street that day after school with you and me and Sunny Jim Curtis and Ed Petrie and Bob Pegram and Carl Hartshorn and Monk Paul--and the rest of those boys--

  --You damn fool! Chestnut Street! I don't know what you're talking about!

  --Yes, you do!--You and me and Bob and Carl and Irwin and Jim Homes and some other boys--'Member what y' said, yuh son-of-a-bitch? Old man English was in his yard there burning up some leaves and it was October and we were comin' along there after school and you could smell the leaves and it was after school and you said, "Here's Mr. Gant, the tombstone-cutter's son."

  --You damn fool! I don't know what you're talking about!--

  --Yes, you do, you cheap Deke son-of-a-bitch--Too good to talk to us on the street when you were
sucking around after Bruce Martin or Steve Patton or Jack Marriott--but a lifelong brother--oh! couldn't see enough of us, could you, when you were alone?

  --The damn fool's crazy!

  --Crazy, am I?--Well, we never had any old gummy grannies tied down and hidden in the attic--which is more than some people that I know can say!--you son-of-a-bitch--who do you think you are with your big airs and big Deke pin!--My people were better people than your crowd ever hoped to be--we've been here longer and we're better people--and as for the tombstone-cutter's son, my father was the best damned stone-cutter that ever lived--he's dying of cancer and all the doctors in the world can't kill him--he's a better man than any little ex-police court magistrate who calls himself a judge will ever be--and that goes for you too--you--

  Why, you crazy fool! I never said anything about your father--

  To hell with you, you damn little bootlicking--

  Come on Gene come on you've had enough you're drunk now come on.

  Why God-damn you to hell, I hate your guts you--

  All right, all right--He's drunk! He's crazy--Come on, Bill! Leave him alone!--He don't know what he's doing--

  All right. Good night, Gene. . . . Be careful now--See you in the morning, boy.

  All right, Robert, I mean nothing against you--you--

  All right!--All right!--Come on, Bill. Let him alone! Good night, Gene--Come on--let's go to bed!--

  To bed to bed to bed to bed to bed! So, so, so, so, so! Make no noise, make no noise, draw the curtains; so, so, so. We'll go to supper i' the morning: so, so, so.

  And Ile goe to bedde at noone.

  Alone, alone now, down the dark, the green, the jungle aisle between the dark drugged snorings of the sleepers. The pause, the stir, the sigh, the sudden shift, the train that now rumbles on through the dark forests of the dream-charged moon-enchanted mind its monotone of silence and for ever: Out of these prison bands of clothes, now, rip, tear, toss, and haul while the green-curtained sleepers move from jungle depths and the even-pounding silence of eternity--into the stiff white sheets, the close, hot air, his long body crookedly athwart, lights out, to see it shining faintly in the coffined under-surface of the berth above--and sleepless, Virginia floating, dreamlike, in the still white haunting of the moon--

  --At night, great trains will pass us in the timeless spell of an unsleeping hypnosis, an endless and unfathomable stupefaction. Then suddenly in the unwaking never-sleeping century of the night, the sensual limbs of carnal whited nakedness that stir with drowsy silken warmth in the green secrecies of Lower Seven, the slow-swelling and lonely and swarm-haunted land--and suddenly, suddenly, silence and thick hardening lust of dark exultant joy, the dreamlike passage of Virginia!--Then in the watches of the night a pause, the sudden silence of up-welling night, and unseen faces, voices, laughter, and farewells upon a lonely little night-time station--the lost and lonely voices of Americans:--"Good-bye! Good-bye, now! Write us when you get there, Helen! Tell Bob he's got to write!--Give my love to Emily!--Good-bye, good-bye now--write us, soon!"--And then the secret, silken and subdued rustling past the thick green curtains and the sleepers, the low respectful negroid tones of the black porter--and then the whistle cry, the tolling bell, the great train mounting to its classic monotone again, and presently the last lights of a little town, the floating void and loneliness of moon-haunted earth--Virginia!

  Also, in the dream--thickets of eternal night--there will be huge steamings on the rail, the sudden smash, the wall of light, the sudden flarings of wild, roaring light upon the moon-haunted and dream-tortured faces of the sleepers!

  --And finally, in that dark jungle of the night, through all the visions, memories, and enchanted weavings of the timeless and eternal spell of time, the moment of for ever--there are two horsemen, riding, riding, riding in the night.

  Who are they? Oh, we know them with our life and they will ride across the land, the moon-haunted passage of our lives for ever. Their names are Death and Pity, and we know their face: our brother and our father ride ever beside us in the dream-enchanted spell and vista of the night; the hooves keep level time beside the rhythms of the train.

  Horsed on the black and moon-maned steeds of fury, cloaked in the dark of night, the spell of time, dream-pale, eternal, they are rushing on across the haunted land, the moon-enchanted wilderness, and their hooves make level thunder with the train.

  Pale Pity and Lean Death their names are, and they will ride for evermore the moon-plantations of Virginia keeping time time time to the level thunder of the train pounding time time time as with four-hooved thunder of phantasmal hooves they pound for ever level with the train across the moon-plantations of Virginia.

  Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum as with storm-phantasmal hooves Lean Death and Pale Pity with quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum . . . campum . . . quadrupedante . . . putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem putrem putrem as with sonitu quatit ungula campum quadrupedante putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem putrem putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem putrem putrem quadrupedante quadrupedante quadrupedante putrem putrem as with sonitu quatit ungula campum quadrupedante putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem putrem putrem . . . as with sonitu quatit ungula campum quadrupedante putrem . . . ungula campum . . . campum . . . ungula . . . ungula campum . . .

  V

  At day-break suddenly, he awoke. The first light of the day, faint, grey-white, shone through the windows of his berth. The faint grey light fell on the stiff white linen, feverishly scuffed and rumpled in the distressful visions of the night, on the hot pillows and on the long cramped figure of the boy, where dim reflection already could be seen on the polished surface of the berth above his head. Outside, that smoke-grey light had stolen almost imperceptibly through the darkness. The air now shone grey-blue and faintly luminous with day, and the old brown earth was just beginning to emerge in that faint light. Slowly, the old brown earth was coming from the darkness with that strange and awful stillness which the first light of the day has always brought.

  The earth emerged with all its ancient and eternal quality: stately and solemn and lonely-looking in that first light, it filled men's hearts with all its ancient wonder. It seemed to have been there for ever, and, though they had never seen it before, to be more familiar to them than their mother's face. And at the same time it seemed they had discovered it once more, and if they had been the first men who ever saw the earth, the solemn joy of this discovery could not have seemed more strange or more familiar. Seeing it, they felt nothing but silence and wonder in their hearts, and were naked and alone and stripped down to their bare selves, as near to truth as men can ever come. They knew that they would die and that the earth would last for ever. And with that feeling of joy, wonder, and sorrow in their hearts, they knew that another day had gone, another day had come, and they knew how brief and lonely are man's days.

  The old earth went floating past them in that first gaunt light of the morning, and it seemed to be the face of time itself, and the noise the train made was the noise of silence. They were fixed there in that classic design of time and silence. The engine smoke went striding out upon the air, the old earth--field and wood and hill and stream and wood and field and hill--went stroking, floating past with a kind of everlasting repetitiveness, and the train kept making on its steady noise that was like silence and for ever--until it almost seemed that they were poised there in that image of eternity for ever--in moveless movement, unsilent silence, spaceless flight.

  All of the noises, rhythms, sounds and variations of the train seemed to belong to all the visions, images, wild cries and oaths and songs and haunting memories of the night before, and now the train itself seemed united to this infinite monotone of silence, and the boy felt that this land now possessed his life, that he had known it for ever, and could now think only with a feeling of unbelief and wonder that yesterday--just yesterday--he had left his home in the far mountains and now was stroking eastward, northward towards the sea.

/>   And against the borders of the East, pure, radiant, for the first time seen in the unbelievable wonder of its new discovery, bringing to all of us, as it had always done, the first life that was ever known on this earth, the golden banner of the day appeared.

  VI

  In morning sunlight on a hospital porch, five flights above the ground, an old dying spectre of a man was sitting, looking mournfully out across the sun-hazed sweep of the city he had known in his youth. He sat there, a rusty, creaking hinge, an almost severed thread of life, a shockingly wasted integument of skin and bone, of which every fibre and sinew was almost utterly rotted out, consumed and honeycombed by the great plant of the cancer which flowered from his entrails and had now spread its fibrous roots to every tissue of his life. Everything was gone: everything was wasted from him: the face was drawn tight and bony as a beak, the skin was clean, tinged with a fatal cancerous yellow, and almost delicately transparent. The great thin blade of nose cut down across the face with knife-like sharpness and in the bony, slanting, almost reptilian cage-formation of the skull, the smallish cold-grey-green eyes were set wearily, with a wretched and enfeebled dullness, out across the great space of the city which swept away and melted at length into the sun-hazed vistas of October.

  Nothing was left but his hands. The rest of the man was dead. But the great hands of the stone-cutter, on whose sinewy and bony substance there was so little that disease or death could waste, looked as powerful and living as ever. Although one of his hands--the right one--had been stiffened years before by an attack of rheumatism, they had lost none of their character of power and massive shapeliness.

  In the huge shapely knuckles, in the length and sinewy thickness of the great fingers--which were twice the size of an ordinary man's--and in the whole length and sinewy contour of the hand, there was a quality of sculptural design which was as solid and proportionate as any of the marble hands of love and grace which the stone-cutter had so often carved upon the surface of a graveyard monument.