OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  He had done this at least a dozen times that night, and each time after a few scrawled lines he would grunt impatiently, wad the paper up into a crumpled ball and throw it into the waste-paper basket at his side. Now, a little after three o'clock in the morning, he was writing steadily; there was no sound now in the room save for the man's thick short breathing and the minute scratching of his pen across the paper. An examination of these wadded balls of paper, however, in the order in which they had been written, would have revealed perfectly the successive states of feeling in the man's spirit.

  The first, which was written after his discovery of the letters, was just a few scrawled words without punctuation or grammatical coherence, ending abruptly in an explosive splintered movement of the pen, and read simply and expressively as follows:

  "You bitch you damned dirty trollop of a lying whore you--"

  And this ended here in an explosive scrawl of splintered ink, and had been wadded up and thrown away into the basket.

  XXIII

  Helen had lain awake for hours in darkness, in a strange comatose state of terror and hallucination. There was no sound save the sound of Barton's breathing beside her, but in her strange drugged state she would imagine she heard all kinds of sounds. As she lay there in the dark, her eyes wide open, wide awake, plucking at her large cleft chin abstractedly, in a kind of drugged hypnosis, thinking like a child:

  "What is that? . . . Someone is coming! . . . That was a car that stopped outside. . . . Now they're coming up the steps. . . . There's someone knocking at the door. . . . Oh, my God! . . . It's about Papa! . . . He's had another attack, they've come to get me . . . he's dead! . . . Hugh! Hugh! Wake up!" she said hoarsely, and seized him by the arm. And he woke, his sparse hair tousled, grumbling sleepily.

  "Hugh! Hugh!" she whispered. "It's Papa--he's dying . . . they're at the door now! . . . oh, for heaven's sake, get up!" she almost screamed in a state of frenzied despair and exasperation. "Aren't you good for anything! . . . Don't lie there like a dummy--Papa may be dying! Get up! Get up! There's someone at the door! My God, you can at least go and find out what it is! Oh, get up, get up, I tell you! . . . Don't leave everything to me! You're a man--you can at least do that much!"--and by now her voice was almost sobbing with exasperation.

  "Well, all right, all right!" he grumbled in a tone of protest, "I'm going! Only give me a moment to find my slippers and my bath-robe, won't you?"

  And, hair still twisted, tall, bony, thin to emaciation, he felt around with his bare feet until he found his slippers, stepped gingerly into them, and put on his bath-robe, tying the cord around his waist, and looking himself over in the mirror carefully, smoothing down his rumpled hair and making a shrugging motion of the shoulders. And she looked at him with a tortured and exasperated glare, saying:

  "Oh, slow, slow, slow! . . . My God, you're the slowest thing that ever lived! . . . I could walk from here to California in the time it takes you to get out of bed."

  "Well, I'm going, I'm going," he said again with surly protest. "I don't want to go to the front door naked--only give me a minute to get ready, won't you?"

  "Then, go, go, go!" she almost screamed at him. "They've been there for fifteen minutes. . . . They're almost hammering the door down--for God's sake go and find out if they've come because of Papa, I beg of you."

  And he went hastily, still preserving a kind of dignity as he stepped along gingerly in his bath-robe and thin pyjamaed legs. And when he got to the door, there was no one, nothing there. The street outside was bare and empty, the houses along the street dark and hushed with their immense and still attentiveness of night and silence and the sleepers, the trees were standing straight and lean with their still young leafage--and he came back again growling surlily.

  "Ah-h, there's no one there! You didn't hear anything! . . . You imagined the whole thing!"

  And for a moment her eyes had a dull appeased look, she plucked at her large cleft chin and said in an abstracted tone: "Ah-hah! . . . Well, come on back to bed, honey, and get some sleep."

  "Ah, get some sleep!" he growled, scowling angrily as he took off his robe--and scuffed the slippers from his feet. "What chance do I have to get any sleep any more with you acting like a crazy woman half the time?"

  She snickered hoarsely and absently, still plucking at her chin, as he lay down beside her; she kissed him, and put her arms around him with a mothering gesture.

  "Well, I know, Hugh," she said quietly, "you've had a hard time of it, but some day we will get away from it and live our own life. I know you didn't marry the whole damned family--but just try to put up with it a little longer: Papa has not got long to live, he's all alone over there in that old house--and she can't realize--she doesn't understand that he is dying--she'll never wake up to the fact until he's gone! I lie here at night thinking about it--and I can't go to sleep . . . I get funny notions in my head." As she spoke these words the dull strained look came into her eyes again, and her big-boned generous face took on the warped outline of hysteria--"You know, I get queer." She spoke the word in a puzzled and baffled way, the dull strained look becoming more pronounced--"I think of him over there all alone in that old house, and then I think they're coming for me--" she spoke the word "they" in this same baffled and puzzled tone, as if she did not clearly understand who "they" were--"I think the telephone is ringing, or that someone is coming up the steps and then I hear them knocking at the door, and then I hear them talking to me, telling me to come quick, he needs me--and then I hear him calling to me, 'Baby! Oh, baby--come quick, baby, for Jesus' sake!'"

  "You've been made the goat," he muttered, "you've got to bear the whole burden on your shoulders. You're cracking up under the strain. If they don't leave you alone I'm going to take you away from here."

  "Do you think it's right?" she demanded in a frenzied tone again, responding thirstily to his argument. "Why, good heavens, Hugh! I've got a right to my own life the same as anybody else. Don't you think I have? I married you!" she cried, as if there were some doubts of the fact. "I wanted a home of my own, children, my own life--good heavens, we have a right to that just the same as anyone else! Don't you think we have?"

  "Yes," he said grimly, "and I'm going to see we get it. I'm tired of seeing you made the victim! If they don't give you some peace or quiet we'll move away from this town."

  "Oh, it's not that I mind doing it for Papa," she said more quietly. "Good heavens, I'll do anything to make that poor old man happier. If only the rest of them--well, honey," she said, breaking off abruptly, "let's forget about it! It's too bad you've got to go through all this now, but it won't last for ever. After Papa is gone, we'll get away from it. Some day we'll have a chance to lead our own lives together."

  "Oh, it's all right about me, dear," the man said quietly, speaking the word "dear" in the precise and nasal way Ohio people have. He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his lean seamed face and care-worn eyes were quietly eloquent with the integrity of devotion and loyalty that was of the essence of his life. "I don't mind it for myself--only I hate to see you get yourself worked up to this condition. I'm afraid you'll crack under the strain: that's all I care about."

  "Well, forget about it. It can't be helped. Just try to make the best of it. Now go on back to sleep, honey, and try to get some rest before you have to get up."

  And returning her kiss, with an obedient and submissive look on his lean face, he said quietly, "Good night, dear," turned over on his side and closed his eyes.

  She turned the light out, and now again there was nothing but darkness, silence, the huge still hush and secrecy of night, her husband's quiet breath of sleep as he lay beside her. And again she could not sleep, but lay there plucking absently at her large cleft chin, her eyes open, turned upward into darkness in a stare of patient, puzzled, and abstracted thought.

  XXIV

  For a long time now, McGuire had sat there without moving, sprawled out upon the desk in a kind of drunken stupor. About hal
f-past three the telephone upon the desk began to ring, jangling the hospital silence with its ominous and insistent clangour, but the big burly figure of the man did not stir, he made no move to answer. Presently he heard the brisk heel-taps of Creasman, the night superintendent, coming along the heavy oiled linoleum of the corridor. She entered, glanced quickly at him, and saying, "Shall I take it?" picked up the phone, took the receiver from its hook, said "hello" and listened for a moment. He did not move.

  In a moment, the night superintendent said quietly:

  "Yes, I'll ask him."

  When she spoke to him, however, her tone had changed completely from the cool professional courtesy of her speech into the telephone: putting the instrument down upon the top of the desk, and covering the mouth-piece with her hand, she spoke quietly to him, but with a note of cynical humour in her voice, bold, coarse, a trifle mocking.

  "It's your wife," she said. "What shall I tell her?"

  He regarded her stupidly for a moment before he answered.

  "What does she want?" he grunted.

  She looked at him with hard eyes touched with pity and regret.

  "What do you think a woman wants?" she said. "She wants to know if you are coming home tonight."

  He stared at her and then grunted:

  "Won't go home."

  She took her hand away from the mouth-piece instantly, and taking up the phone again, spoke smoothly, quietly, with cool crisp courtesy:

  "The doctor will not be able to go home tonight, Mrs. McGuire. He has to operate at seven-thirty. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . At seven-thirty. . . . He has decided it is best to stay here until the operation is over. . . . Yes. . . . I'll tell him. . . . Thank you. . . . Good-bye."

  She hung up quietly and then turning to him, her hands arched cleanly on starched hips, she looked at him for a moment with a bold sardonic humour.

  "What did she say?" he mumbled thickly.

  "Nothing," she said quietly. "Nothing at all. What else is there to say?"

  He made no answer but just kept staring at her in his bloated drunken way with nothing but the numb swelter of that irremediable anguish in his heart. In a moment, her voice hardening imperceptibly, the nurse spoke quietly again:

  "Oh, yes--and I forgot to tell you--you had another call tonight."

  He moistened his thick lips, and mumbled:

  "Who was it?"

  "It was that woman of yours."

  There was no sound save the stertorous labour of his breath; he stared at her with his veined and yellowed eyes, and grunted stolidly:

  "What did she want?"

  "She wanted to know if the doc-taw was theah," Creasman said in a coarse and throaty parody of refinement. "And is he coming in tonight? Really, I should like to know. . . . Ooh, yaas," Creasman went on throatily, adding a broad stroke or two on her own account. "I simply must find out! I cawn't get my sleep in until I do. . . . Well," she demanded harshly, "what am I going to tell her if she calls again?"

  "What did she say to tell me?"

  "She said"--the nurse's tone again was lewdly tinged with parody--"to tell you that she is having guests for dinner tomorrow night--this evening--and that you simply got to be thöh, you, and your wife, too--ooh, Gawd, yes!--the Reids are comin', don't-cherknow--and if you are not thöh Gawd only knows what will happen!"

  He glowered at her drunkenly for a moment, and then, waving thick fingers at her in disgust, he mumbled:

  "You got a dirty mouth . . . don't become you. . . . Unlady-like. . . . Don't like a dirty-talkin' woman. . . . Never did. . . . Unbecomin'. . . . Unlady-like. . . . Nurses all alike . . . all dirty talkers . . . don't like 'em."

  "Oh, dirty talkers, your granny!" she said coarsely. "Now you leave the nurses alone. . . . They're decent enough girls, most of 'em, until they come here and listen to you for a month or two. . . . You listen to me, Hugh McGuire; don't blame the nurses. When it comes to dirty talking, you can walk off with the medals any day in the week. . . . Even if I am your cousin, I had a good Christian raising out in the country before I came here. So don't talk to me about nurses' dirty talk: after a few sessions with you in the operating room even the Virgin Mary could use language fit to make a monkey blush. So don't blame it on the nurses. Most of them are white as snow compared to you."

  "You're dirty talkers--all of you," he muttered, waving his thick fingers in her direction. "Don't like it. . . . Unbecomin' in a lady."

  For a moment she did not answer, but stood looking at him, arms akimbo on her starched white hips, a glance that was bold, hard, sardonic, but somehow tinged with a deep and broad affection.

  Then, taking her hands off her hips, she bent swiftly over him, reached down between his legs, and got the jug and lifting it up to the light in order to make her cynical inspection of its depleted contents more accurate, she remarked with ironic approbation:

  "My, my! You're doing pretty well, aren't you? . . . Well, it won't be long now, will it?" she said cheerfully, and then turning to him abruptly and accusingly, demanded:

  "Do you realize that you were supposed to call Helen Gant at twelve o'clock?" She glanced swiftly at the clock. "Just three and a half hours ago. Or did you forget it?"

  He passed his thick hand across the reddish unshaved stubble of his beard.

  "Who?" he said stupidly. "Where? What is it?"

  "Oh, nothing to worry about," she said with a light hard humour. "Just a little case of carcinoma of the prostate. He's going to die anyway, so you've got nothing to worry about at all."

  "Who?" he said stupidly again. "Who is it?"

  "Oh, just a man," she said gaily. "An old, old man name Mr. Gant.--You've been his physician for twenty years, but maybe you've forgotten him. You know--they come and go; some live and others die--it's all right,--this one's going to die. They'll bury him--it'll all come out right one way or the other--so you've nothing to worry about at all. . . . Even if you kill him," she said cheerfully. "He's just an old, old man with cancer, and bound to die anyway, so promise me you won't worry about it too much, will you?"

  She looked at him a moment longer; then, putting her hand under his fat chin, she jerked his head up sharply. He stared at her stupidly with his yellowed drunken eyes, and in them she saw the mute anguish of a tortured animal, and suddenly her heart was twisted with pity for him.

  "Look here," she said, in a hard and quiet voice, "what's wrong with you?"

  In a moment he mumbled thickly:

  "Nothing's wrong with me."

  "Is it the woman business again? For God's sake, are you never going to grow up, McGuire? Are you going to remain an overgrown schoolboy all your life? Are you going to keep on eating your heart out over a bitch who thinks that spring is here every time her hind end itches? Are you going to throw your life away, and let your work go to smash because some damned woman in the change of life has done you dirt? What kind of man are you, anyway?" she jeered. "Jesus God! If it's a woman that you want the woods are full of 'em. Besides," she added, "what's wrong with your own wife! She's worth a million of those flossy sluts."

  He made no answer and in a moment she went on in a harsh and jeering tone that was almost deliberately coarse:

  "Haven't you learned yet, with all you've seen of it, that a piece of tail is just a piece of tail, and that in the dark it doesn't matter one good God-damn whether it's brown, black, white, or yellow?"

  Even as she spoke, something cold and surgical in his mind, which no amount of alcohol seemed to dull or blur, was saying accurately: "Why do they all feel such contempt for one another? What is it in them that makes them despise themselves?"

  Aloud, however, waving his thick fingers at her in a gesture of fat disgust, he said:

  "Creasman, you got a dirty tongue. . . . Don't like to hear a woman talk like that. . . . Never liked to hear a dirty-talkin' woman. . . . You're no lady!"

  "Ah-h! No lady!" she said bitterly, and let her hands fall in a gesture of defeat. "All right, you poor fool, if that's the way you
feel about it, go ahead and drink yourself to death over your 'lady.' That's what's wrong with you."

  And, muttering angrily, she left him. He sat there stupidly, without moving, until her firm heel-taps had receded down the silent hall, and he heard a door close. Then he reached down between his knees and got the jug and drank again. And again there was nothing in the place except the sound of silence, the rapid ticking of a little clock, the thick short breathing of the man.

  XXV

  Somewhere, far away, across the cool sweet silence of the night, Helen heard the sound of a train. For a moment she could hear the faint and ghostly tolling of its bell, the short explosive blasts of its hard labour, now muted almost into silence, now growing near, immediate as it laboured out across the night from the enclosure of a railway cut down by the river's edge; and for an instant she heard the lonely wailing and receding cry of the train's whistle, and then the long heavy rumble of its wheels; and then nothing but silence, darkness, the huge hush and secrecy of night again.

  And still plucking at her chin, thinking absently, but scarcely conscious of her thinking, like a child in reverie, she thought:

  "There is a freight-train going west along the river. Now, by the sound, it should be passing below Patton Hill, just across from where Riverside Park used to be before the flood came and washed it all away. . . . Now it is getting farther off, across the river from the casket factory. . . . Now it is almost gone, I can hear nothing but the sound of wheels . . . it is going west toward Boiling Springs . . . and after that it will come to Wilson City, Tennessee . . . and then to Dover. . . . Knoxville . . . Memphis--after that? I wonder where the train is going . . . where it will be tomorrow night? . . . Perhaps across the Mississippi River, and then on through Arkansas . . . perhaps to St. Louis . . . and then on to--what comes next?" she thought absently, plucking at her chin--"to Kansas City, I suppose . . . and then to Denver . . . and across the Rocky Mountains . . . and across the desert . . . and then across more mountains and then at last to California."