OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  He is a nervous energetic figure of a man, of middle height, with greying hair, a short-cropped moustache, and the dry, spotted, slightly concave features which characterize many Americans of his age. A man who, until recent years, has known nothing but hard work since his childhood, he has now developed, in his years of leisure, an enthusiastic devotion to the game, that amounts to an obsession.

  He has not only given to the town the baseball park which bears his name, he is also president of the local Club, and uncomplainingly makes good its annual deficit. During the playing season his whole time is spent in breathing, thinking, talking baseball all day long: if he is not at the game, bent forward in his seat behind the home plate in an attitude of ravenous absorption, occasionally shouting advice and encouragement to the players in his rapid, stammering, rather high-pitched voice that has a curiously incisive penetration and carrying power, then he is up on the Square before the fire department going over every detail of the game with his cronies and asking eager, rapid-fire questions of the young red-necked players he employs, and towards whom he displays the worshipful admiration of a schoolboy.

  Now this man, who, despite his doctor's orders, smokes twenty or thirty strong black cigars a day, and in fact is never to be seen without a cigar in his fingers or in his mouth, may be heard all over the crowd speaking eagerly in his rapid, stammering voice to a man with a quiet and pleasant manner who stands behind him. This is the assistant chief of the fire department and his name is Bickett.

  "Jim," Mr. Sluder is saying in his eager and excited way, "I--I--I--I tell you what I think! If--if--if Speaker comes up there again with men on bases--I--I--I just believe Matty will strike him out--I swear I do. What do you think?" he demands eagerly and abruptly.

  Mr. Bickett, first pausing to draw slowly and languorously on a cigarette before casting it into the gutter, makes some easy, quiet and non-committal answer which satisfies Mr. Sluder completely, since he is paying no attention to him, anyway. Immediately, he claps the chewed cigar which he is holding in his stubby fingers into his mouth, and nodding his head briskly and vigorously, with an air of great decision, he stammers out again:

  "Well--I--I--I just believe that's what he's going to do: I--I--I don't think he's afraid of that fellow at all! I--I--I think he knows he can strike him out any time he feels like it."

  The boy knows everyone in the crowd as he looks around him. Here are the other boys of his own age, and older--his fellow route-boys in the morning's work, his school companions, delivery boys employed by druggists, merchants, clothiers, the sons of the more wealthy and prominent people of the town. Here are the boys from the eastern part of town from which he comes and in which his father's house is built--the older, homelier, and for some reason more joyful and confident part of town to him--though why, he does not know, he cannot say. Perhaps it is because the hills along the eastern borders of the town are near and close and warm, and almost to be touched. But in the western part of town, the great vistas of the soaring ranges, the distant summits of the Smokies fade far away into the west, into the huge loneliness, the haunting desolation of the unknown distance, the red, lonely light of the powerful retreating sun.

  But now the old red light is slanting swiftly, the crowd is waiting tense and silent, already with a touch of sorrow, resignation, and the winter in their hearts, for summer's over, the game is ending, and October has come again, has come again. In the window, where the red slant of the sun already falls, Ben is moving quickly, slipping new placards into place, taking old ones out, scowling, snapping his hard, white fingers in command, speaking curtly, sharply, irritably to the busy figures, moving at his bidding on the floor. The game--the last game of the series--is sharp, close, bitterly contested. No one can say as yet which way the issue goes, which side will win, when it will end--but that fatality of red slanting light, the premonitory menace of the frost, the fatal certitude of victory and defeat, with all the sorrow and regret that both can bring to man, are in their hearts.

  From time to time, a wild and sudden cheer breaks sharply from the waiting crowd, as something happens to increase their hope of victory, but for the most part they are tense and silent now, all waiting for the instant crisis, the quick end.

  Behind Ben, seated in a swivel chair, but turned out facing toward the crowd, the boy can see the gouty bulk of Mr. Flood, the owner of the paper. He is bent forward heavily in his seat, his thick apoplectic fingers braced upon his knees, his mouth ajar, his coarse, jowled, venously empurpled face and bulging yellow eyes turned out upon the crowd, in their constant expression of slow stupefaction. From time to time, when the crowd cheers loudly, the expression of brutal surprise upon Mr. Flood's coarse face will deepen perceptibly and comically, and in a moment he will say stupidly, in his hoarse and phlegmy tones:

  "Who done that? . . . What are they yelling for? . . . Which side's ahead now? . . . What happened that time, Ben?"

  To which Ben usually makes no reply whatever, but the savage scowl between his grey eyes deepens with exasperation, and finally, cursing bitterly, he says:

  "Damn it, Flood! What do you think I am--the whole damned newspaper? For heaven's sake, man, do you think all I've got to do is answer damn-fool questions? If you want to know what's happening, go outside where the rest of them are!"

  "Well, Ben, I just wanted to know how--" Mr. Flood begins hoarsely, heavily, and stupidly.

  "Oh, for God's sake! Listen to this, won't you?" says Ben, laughing scornfully and contemptuously as he addresses the invisible auditor of his scorn, and jerking his head sideways toward the bloated figure of his employer as he does so. "Here!" he says, in a disgusted manner. "For God's sake, someone go and tell him what the score is, and put him out of his misery!" And scowling savagely, he speaks sharply into the mouthpiece of the phone and puts another placard on the line.

  And suddenly, even as the busy figures swarm and move there in the window before the waiting crowd, the bitter thrilling game is over! In waning light, in faint shadows, far, far away in a great city of the North, the 40,000 small empetalled faces bend forward, breathless, waiting--single and strange and beautiful as all life, all living, and man's destiny. There's a man on base, the last flash of the great right arm, the crack of the bat, the streaking white of a clean-hit ball, the wild, sudden, solid roar, a pair of flashing legs have crossed the rubber, and the game is over! And instantly, there at the city's heart, in the great stadium, and all across America, in ten thousand streets, ten thousand little towns, the crowd is breaking, flowing, lost for ever! That single, silent, most intolerable loveliness is gone for ever. With all its tragic, proud and waiting unity, it belongs now to the huge, the done, the indestructible fabric of the past, has moved at last out of that inscrutable maw of chance we call the future into the strange finality of dark time.

  Now it is done, the crowd is broken, lost, exploded, and 10,000,000 men are moving singly down 10,000 streets--toward what? Some by the light of Hesperus which, men say, can bring all things that live on earth to their own home again--flock to the fold, the father to his child, the lover to the love he has forsaken--and the proud of heart, the lost, the lonely of the earth, the exile and the wanderer--to what? To pace again the barren avenues of night, to pass before the bulbous light of lifeless streets with half-averted faces, to pass the thousand doors, to feel again the ancient hopelessness of hope, the knowledge of despair, the faith of desolation.

  And for a moment, when the crowd has gone, Ben stands there silent, lost, a look of bitter weariness, disgust, and agony upon his grey gaunt face, his lonely brow, his fierce and scornful eyes. And as he stands there that red light of waning day has touched the flashing head, the gaunt, starved face, has touched the whole image of his fiercely wounded, lost and scornful spirit with the prophecy of its strange fatality. And in that instant as the boy looks at his brother, a knife is driven through his entrails suddenly, for with an instant final certitude, past reason, proof, or any visual evidence, he sees the end and ans
wer of his brother's life. Already death rests there on his proud head like a coronal. The boy knows in that one instant Ben will die.

  XX

  He visited Genevieve frequently over a period of several months. As his acquaintance with the family deepened, the sharpness of his appetite for seduction dwindled, and was supplanted by an ecstatic and insatiable glee. He felt that he had never in his life been so enormously and constantly amused: he would think exultantly for days of an approaching visit, weaving new and more preposterous fables for their consumption, bursting into violent laughter on the streets as he thought of past scenes, the implication of a tone, a gesture, the transparent artifice of mother and daughter, the incredible exaggeration of everything.

  He was charmed, enchanted: his mind swarmed daily with monstrous projects--his heart quivered in a tight cage of nervous exultancy as he thought of the infinite richness of absurdity that lay stored for him. His ethical conscience was awakened hardly at all--he thought of these three people as monsters posturing for his delight. His hatred of cruelty, the nauseating horror at the idiotic brutality of youth, had not yet sufficiently defined itself to check his plunge. He was swept along in the full tide of his adventure: he thought of nothing else.

  Through an entire winter, and into the spring, he went to see this little family in a Boston suburb. Then he got tired of the game and the people as suddenly as he had begun, with the passionate boredom, weariness, and intolerance of which youth is capable. And now that the affair was ending, he was at last ashamed of the part he had played in it and of the arrogant contempt with which he had regaled himself at the expense of other people. And he knew that the Simpsons had themselves at length become conscious of the meaning of his conduct, and saw that, in some way, he had made them the butt of a joke. And when they saw this, the family suddenly attained a curious quiet dignity, of which he had not believed them capable and which later he could not forget.

  One night, as he was waiting in the parlour for the girl to come down, her mother entered the room, and stood looking at him quietly for a moment. Presently she spoke:

  "You have been coming here for some time now," she said, "and we were always glad to see you. My daughter liked you when she met you--she likes you yet--" the woman said slowly, and went on with obvious difficulty and embarrassment. "Her welfare means more to me than anything in the world--I would do anything to save her from unhappiness or misfortune." She was silent a moment, then said bluntly, "I think I have a right to ask you a question: what are your intentions concerning her?"

  He told himself that these words were ridiculous and part of the whole comic and burlesque quality of the family, and yet he found now that he could not laugh at them. He sat looking at the fire, uncertain of his answer, and presently he muttered:

  "I have no intentions concerning her."

  "All right," the woman said quietly. "That is all I wanted to know. . . . You are a young man," she went on slowly after a pause, "and very clever and intelligent--but there are still a great many things you do not understand. I know now that we looked funny to you and you have amused yourself at our expense. . . . I don't know why you thought it was such a joke, but I think you will live to see the day when you are sorry for it. It's not good to make a joke of people who have liked you and tried to be your friends."

  "I know it's not," he said, and muttered: "I'm sorry for it now."

  "Still, I can't believe," the woman said, "that you are a boy who would wilfully bring sorrow and ruin to anyone who had never done you any harm. . . . The only reason I am saying this is for my daughter's sake."

  "You don't need to worry about that," he said. "I'm sorry now for acting as I have--but you know everything I've done. And I'll not come back again. But I'd like to see her and tell her that I'm sorry before I go."

  "Yes," the woman said, "I think you ought."

  She went out and a few minutes later the girl came down, entered the room, and he said good-bye to her. He tried to make amends to her with fumbling words, but she said nothing. She stood very still as he talked, almost rigid, her lips pressed tightly together, her hands clenched, winking back the tears.

  "All right," she said finally, giving him her hand. "I'll say good-bye to you without hard feelings. . . . Some day . . . some day," her voice choked and she winked furiously--"I hope you'll understand--oh, good-bye!" she cried, and turned away abruptly. "I'm not mad at you any longer--and I wish you luck. . . . You know so many things, don't you?--You're so much smarter than we are, aren't you? . . . And I'm sorry for you when I think of all you've got to learn . . . of what you're going through before you do."

  "Good-bye," he said.

  He never saw any of them again, but he could not forget them. And as the years went on, the memory of all their folly, falseness, and hypocrisy was curiously altered and subdued and the memory that grew more vivid and dominant was of a little family, one of millions huddled below the immense and timeless skies that bend above us, lost in the darkness of nameless and unnumbered lives upon the lonely wilderness of life that is America, and banked together against these giant antagonists, for comfort, warmth, and love, with a courage and integrity that would not die and could not be forgotten.

  XXI

  One afternoon early in May, Helen met McGuire upon the street. He had just driven in behind Wood's Pharmacy on Academy Street, and was preparing to go in to the prescription counter when she approached him. He got out of his big dusty-looking roadster with a painful grunt, slammed the door, and began to fumble slowly in the pockets of his baggy coat for a cigarette. He turned slowly as she spoke, grunted, "Hello, Helen," stuck the cigarette on his fat under-lip and lighted it, and then, looking at her with his brutal, almost stupid, but somehow kindly glance, he barked coarsely:

  "What's on your mind?"

  "It's about Papa," she began in a low, hoarse and almost morbid tone--"Now I want to know if this last attack means that the end has come. You've got to tell me--we've got the right to know about it--"

  The look of strain and hysteria on her big-boned face, her dull eyes fixed on him in a morbid stare, the sore on her large cleft chin, above all, the brooding insistence of her tone as she repeated phrases he had heard ten thousand times before suddenly rasped upon his frayed nerves, stretched them to the breaking-point; he lost his air of hard professionalism and exploded in a flare of brutal anger:

  "You want to know what? You've got a right to be told what? For God's sake,"--his tone was brutal, rasping, jeering--"pull yourself together and stop acting like a child." And then, a little more quietly, but brusquely, he demanded:

  "All right. What do you want to know?"

  "I want to know how long he's going to last," she said with morbid insistence. "Now, you're a doctor," she wagged her large face at him with an air of challenge that infuriated him, "and you ought to tell us. We've got to know!"

  "Tell you! Got to know!" he shouted. "What the hell are you talking about? What do you expect to be told?"

  "How long Papa has to live," she said with the same morbid insistence as before.

  "You've asked me that a thousand times," he said harshly. "I've told you that I didn't know. He may live another month, he may be here a year from now--how can we tell about these things," he said in an exasperated tone, "particularly where your father is concerned. Helen, three or four years ago I might have made a prediction. I did make them--I didn't see how W. O. could go on six months longer. But he's fooled us all--you, me, the doctors at Johns Hopkins, everyone who's had anything to do with the case. The man is dying from malignant carcinoma--he has been dying for years--his life is hanging by a thread and the thread may break at any time--but when it is going to break I have no way of telling you."

  "Ah-hah," she said reflectively. Her eyes had taken on a dull appeased look as he talked to her, and now she had begun to pluck at her large cleft chin. "Then you think--" she began.

  "I think nothing," he shouted. "And for God's sake stop picking at your chin!"
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br />   For a moment he felt the sudden brutal anger that one sometimes feels toward a contrary child. He felt like taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. Instead, he took it out in words and, scowling at her, said with brutal directness:

  "Look here! . . . You've got to pull yourself together. You're becoming a mental case--do you hear me? You wander around like a person in a dream, you ask questions no one can answer, you demand answers no one can give--you work yourself up into hysterical frenzies and then you collapse and soak yourself with drugs, patent medicines, corn-licker--anything that has alcohol in it--for days at a time. When you go to bed at night you think you hear voices talking to you, someone coming up the steps, the telephone. And really you hear nothing: there is nothing there. Do you know what that is?" he demanded brutally. "Those are symptoms of insanity--you're becoming unbalanced; if it keeps on they may have to send you to the crazy-house to take the cure."

  "Ah-hah! Uh-huh!" she kept plucking at her big chin with an air of abstracted reflection and with a curious look of dull appeasement in her eyes as if his brutal words had really given her some comfort. Then she suddenly came to herself, looked at him with clear eyes, and her generous mouth touched at the corners with the big lewd tracery of her earthy humour, she sniggered hoarsely, and prodding him in his fat ribs with a big bony finger, she said:

  "You think I've got 'em, do you? Well--" she nodded seriously in agreement, frowning a little as she spoke, but with the faint grin still legible around the corners of her mouth,--"I've often thought the same thing. You may be right," she nodded seriously again. "There are times when I do feel off--you know?--queer--looney--crazy--like there was a screw loose somewhere--Brrr!" and with the strange lewd mixture of frown and grin, she made a whirling movement with her finger towards her head. "What do you think it is?" she went on with an air of seriousness. "Now, I'd just like to know. What is it that makes me act like that? . . . Is it woman-business?" she said with a lewd and comic look upon her face. "Am I getting funny like the rest of them--now I've often thought the same--that maybe I'm going through a change of life--is that it? Maybe--"