Bright Flows the River

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I wish you wouldn’t pretend all the time that you’re illiterate,” said Guy, in his strong young man’s amused voice.

  “I sure am illiterate in not wanting what other folks want, to their death,” said Tom, puffing on his pipe as he lit it. “Besides, if the people hereabouts even suspected I went to a good university downstate, they’d sure think I was crazy, or worse. But, it’s my life, and I’m living it as I want to live it. That’s all that matters, Jerry, my lad.”

  “But what will you do when you get old?” asked Guy, smiling wider but with evident reluctance.

  “You’ve never asked me that before,” said Tom. “What’ll I do?” He thrust out one scarecrow leg in its patched denim. “I got a leg full of shrapnel I got during the other war and I get two hundred dollars a month compensation from the V.A. Eighty percent disability.” He cackled. “Probably’ll get more later, and maybe a pension. And I got this farm, such as it is.” He pointed with the stem of his pipe. “This farm’s near Cranston. There’s going to be a lot of building on bought farms around here. Suburbs. Not that I’d sell it so long’s I live. A man buys land; he don’t sell it. Maybe that won’t be enough for you, Jerry, when you get it when I’m dead. But—you do what you want to with it. It’s your life.”

  “You were never ambitious,” said Guy, in a neutral tone. He put his cigarette to his mouth and smoked thoughtfully.

  “Now, why the hell should I be?” asked Tom, with some irritation. “I got enough to live on, if I’m careful. I got a roof, some good stock and truck. Got a Sunday suit and another pair of shoes. My life ain’t the life other people would like. But I like it. It suits me. No hustle, no bustle, no fretting over bank accounts and investments. No competition. It’s my life. No apologies. I don’t give a damn for other people and their opinions, son. Once you do you’ve set yourself up in a jail, with the bars made of other people’s judgments, and a locked door made of other people’s chatter about you. You ain’t yourself anymore. You’re what your neighbors, and the community, made out of your living soul. Except it ain’t living any longer. It’s the creation of other people. So, what’s left of what you were born with? Gone, gone forever. Your unique mind is composed of the echoes of other people’s thoughts, just as they were the echoes of others before them. What a life! Son, my life’s not your life, and I’m glad you still have a life of your own. I never hounded you to be like me or anyone else. It’s your life, like I said. God help you if you don’t live it as your own and no one else’s.”

  Now the grin faded, and a strange and sober look replaced it and the light blue eyes were sharp and compassionate. “Ain’t that what I’ve been telling you all your life? I thought you listened. Not in one ear and out the other.”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” said Guy. His father grinned again.

  “A bad habit,” said Tom. “When did you get snarled up in that? You wasn’t like that when you left here for that damned war. It’s made you solemn or something else bad. Nothing like a war to change a man around and ruin him.”

  “I’ve had experiences,” said Guy, and again the somberness was on his young features and his polished black eyes took on a certain ferocity. “And, I’m older. I’m not the kid who went away. I’m a man now.”

  “Maybe that’s good, maybe that’s not so good, Jerry. You got to keep a lot of childhood in your soul. Wonder, and such, and an eagerness for the future, and adventure. Lose that, and you lose something that’s vital, and you’ll just become a drudge in living, even if you get to be a millionaire. Remember what Livy said, couple of thousand years ago! ‘Seldom are men blessed with good fortune and good sense at the same time.’ A man can get along without good fortune, but, by God, he can’t get along without good sense. One’s being a robot, the other’s being a man in charge of his life.”

  He looked at his stiff leg again. “Once I kind of lost my own way. Got drafted for the other war. Had experiences, too. Saved my pay. Got a bonus. Thought I’d go back to teaching somewheres. Never told you I was a prof once, did I? It don’t matter. Then it came to me: I didn’t want to teach. I didn’t want to go into any kind of business. I wanted to live my own life. So, here I am, living it. Aimless, useless, worth nothing, the other folks say. But to me it ain’t aimless or useless. It’s fascinating. No worries, no sweat. And I got me a good woman this time.”

  Guy frowned, glanced at the open door of the farmhouse. “I couldn’t live like this,” he said, as if to himself.

  “Good. Who’s asking you to live like this? Live as you want to live, Jerry. Do what you want to do and be damned to anyone else, including me. But be sure it’s what you really want and not what you think you ought to do. Say, one time you told me, before you went off to that damned stupid war, that you wanted to be a doctor. You said you’d always wanted that. So, why don’t you?”

  But Guy said, “We all can’t live the way we want to. That’s chaos. A doctor? There’s no money. And I’m twenty-four and never went to college. So even if I had the money to go to medical school after college it would be at least fourteen years before I’d be ready to practice—or go into cancer research, as I’d like to do, perhaps even fifteen years. I’d be thirty-eight or -nine.

  Tom held up his hand. “One thing at a time. You say there’d be chaos if everybody’d live his own life. Well, as the Bible says, most men are born to be drawers of water and hewers of wood. That’s what they’d like, most people, to do useful heavy work on the land or in factories or building, or such. Why should their parents force them into academic studies, where they’d be miserable? False pride. What’s wrong with labor? Chaos is created by discontented and overeducated men, and we’ve got millions of them now and that’s going to be bad for an orderly society. Men who’ve been forced to work at something or learn something they despise. Is that living? No, that’s real chaos, when it’s in the mind or the heart of a man. Chaos.

  “On the other hand, there’re men whose whole aim is to go into the professions. Why don’t they? Money? What’s that got to do with it? They could work at any job and go to school at nights—I know dozens who did. Exhausting? Sure. But the hell with exhaustion. As the old Romans used to say, ‘He is able—if he thinks he is able.’ Everything has its price, sonny boy. The Spaniards say, ‘Take what you want, says God. But pay for it.’ I decided on a profession myself when I was young. But when I got it I saw it wasn’t for me, after all. So—here I am, living as I want to live. I paid for everything in my life, not just money, and I’m glad I did. Now I’m content. No chaos in me. But, there was before. Miserable years when I tried to conform to what people thought I ought to do. I was desperate. Had a revolution come along I’d have joined it, fooling myself I was joining a Cause. Anything to run away from the mess I had made out of my life. Got a dose of common sense just in time.

  “I hear about this new G.I. Bill. That’ll help you to do what you want to do. To take up the slack—get yourself a job doing anything useful. It’ll keep you in bread and butter and a shelter over your head, if no luxuries. A small price to pay—for being a whole man. You say I’m not ambitious. What about you, son? Being ambitious means being ready to pay the price for what you want. Aren’t you man enough to pay the price—of being a man?”

  Guy threw his cigarette away and his young face became recalcitrant and dark. “You talk as if I’ve got all the time in the world, Pa.”

  “So you have. What’re years? Just a delusion. In the meantime, while you study and work, you are living, and when you live, time is not measured; it is an eternity, with no limits.” He paused and screwed up his eyes in the sun and stared at Guy. He spoke in a quieter voice but a more insistent one. “What’re you afraid of, Jerry?”

  “Oh shit, Pa! I’m not afraid of anything, after that war!” He hesitated. “You forget Ma. She’s fifty-four years old and works hard. How about duty, my responsibility to her as her son?” He looked down at the ground. “I’ve got to do something to make money—fast.”

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nbsp; Tom chucked hoarsely. “Your ma’s a pretty tough woman, kiddo. Always was, even if she’s a roaring Bible-shouter. So, you got polluted after all, with all that ‘duty.’ When a man’s manacled by duty he don’t do himself or anyone else any good. He’s filled with hate, and it usually is projected on the one who received all that duty. Many’s the man I know who thought he should spend his life in duty to his wife and children, and parents, and he ended up wishing they were dead, or he ran away. Sometimes, in extreme cases, he murdered. It was a sickness all around. A chained man is bound to become wicked, one way or another. And who suffers at the last? Not only him, but the ones he sacrificed himself for. Think they were happy? No. Many’s the man these days dying of heart attacks, or strokes or suicide, because he sacrificed himself in the name of duty. Hell.

  “Back to your ma. When I left teaching a lot of muttonheads—most students now are muttonheads—I found this place, after a lot of wandering. Just what I wanted. Land—with a little good acreage. Just enough to provide for me. And, being still young, I needed a permanent woman, to help on the land and to screw. I didn’t want to spend my life on a good rich farm, sweating my life out. Just enough to live on and to look on this damned mysterious world and think and read and ponder. Only that’s living, when you live in your soul and your heart. Well, anyways.

  “I found your ma in Cranston, working in a boardinghouse. A good hefty woman, and I thought, no foolishness about her. She still isn’t foolish, except when it comes to her stringent religion. Then she’s an idiot. But somehow, I, being a man, a religious woman, I thought, was bound to be pure, and that’s what I wanted—a pure, hard-working, sensible woman who hadn’t been obliging every Tom, Dick, and Harry around. See how stupid I was in many ways? What’s traffic around the genitals got to do with the intrinsic worth of a person? Later I found out that Magdalens make fine wives, when they fall in love, whereas the ‘pure’ women usually ended up using a whip on everybody in sight, and imposing their ‘morals’ on husbands and children and making their lives miserable, and talking about duty to man and God all the time. Wonder what God really thinks of such women—and some men, too—who live entirely for ‘duty,’ and create a hell on earth for others in their vicinity. If God is anything at all, He is a God of joy and love and laughter and humor and youth, and not some old Party glowering over the walls of heaven with hellfire and damnation like thunderbolts in His Hand: ready to hurl them on those who love ‘illicitly,’ as it is called, or not doing their damned ‘duty’ as regulated by the parsons. Hell, son, a man who is faithful to his wife when he detests her is violating the great Law of Love, which rules the universe—if there is any law at all.

  “Say, I’m wandering, maybe. You’ll remember that it was Christ who refused to condemn Mary Magdalen, and prevented her death by stoning. He said, ‘Her sins are forgiven her—for she loved much.’ There ain’t any sin in the world, Jerry, that can’t be forgiven, if a person loves. The great sin, and maybe it’s the unpardonable one, is not loving. A strictly virtuous and dutiful man or woman is a great sinner, in spite of Bible-shouting and going to church and living a ‘good’ life—because they didn’t love. They sinned against God Himself, who is a God of Love.”

  He paused. Guy had been listening intently and now his dark face was lighted by a brief smile. He said, “I guess, then, that God must love you a lot, you being a great sinner, Pa.”

  Tom grinned anticly. “Well, I love Him, in my fashion. Most sinners do. Only the virtuous really hate Him in their hearts—they think He’s a taskmaster, full of hate, too, for anything beautiful and joyous and delightful. And deep in everybody’s heart is the sure knowledge that joy is a celebration of the God of Joy. So, the ‘virtuous’ deny joy because they think God is purely a God of wrath who must be appeased at any cost, though they know, by instinct, that’s wrong. So, they violate their God-given instinct, which is to love wholly and completely. That’s what has always led to religious cruelty and persecutions—in the name of a God of hate—who doesn’t exist, anyway. The lovers of a God of hate are the most evil people in the world, in spite of their prissy faces and their talk of ‘serving the Lord, and mankind.’ If there’s a hell, which I doubt, it’s full of such folks.

  “Now: I met your ma. A tall, good-looking youngish woman who knew how to work hard and had a good figure and fine legs. I thought there must be hidden fire in her. I was wrong. There was fire, all right, a fire of duty and ‘serving,’ and denying life. Besides, I was getting hot. Hadn’t had a woman for a long time. I’d have settled for jumps in the hay and ass-patting and love and fun and laughter. But not your ma. A ‘good’ pure woman. So, to have her I had to marry her. I should have been warned; she didn’t even drink a glass of beer. Now, there’re people who shouldn’t drink, for health or other reasons, and I got no quarrel with them. But a man or woman who ‘refrains’ out of some damned idiot principle or other is again denying God. Remember what David the King said: ‘Oil to make the countenance shine, wine to make the heart of man glad.’ And he didn’t mean grape juice, either. The fruit of the grape is a gift of God, if it ain’t abused, as no good thing should be abused, including sex.

  “Your ma didn’t think she’d like to live on a farm, but she’d give it a try. She did; she tried very hard. It was no use. Maybe if she’d been happy with me she’d have made do. But she wasn’t happy. I wouldn’t conform to what she thought was ‘right’ and ‘decent.’ She’d accuse me of not being ‘dutiful’ and responsible. She tried to make me into the kind of man she thought was worthwhile: Slaving and looking grim and righteous and begetting children who’d also be grim and righteous, and living in the Name of the Lord. She tried to make me go to church. Now, I ain’t got any prejudices about going to church. Maybe if more would go it would be a better world—if it was kept in proportion. But to live for church and not for day-to-day life is soul-killing and joy-killing. That wasn’t the Lord’s intention. ‘Make a joyful noise until the Lord,’ said David, and that didn’t mean groaning out hymns and sitting in silent pews really hating everybody. A joyful noise. Your ma never knew about that. All her ‘noises’ were sober and sour. It must have made God wince. Remember: Christ did preach occasionally in the synagogues, but most of what He said was said out in the hectic world, on hills and in fields in sight of the green shining waters, and in roaring cities teeming with life.”

  Tom sighed. He drew heavily on his pipe. “Like a lot of young men I was more interested in what was between your ma’s legs and not what was between her ears, and in her heart. So, we got married, and within a year you were born. She’d had a hard time. So no more bouncing in bed, or, even worse, she’d show no joy. I hadn’t noticed that at first. So, when you was five, she lit out, with all the money I could find for her, and opened that boardinghouse, where she takes in only prudent and serious men, God help them.”

  A great oak tree near the farmhouse tossed its serrated leaves in the sun, and every leaf shone. A cooling breeze ran over the land, filling the air with the scent of dust and hot dry earth. The door opened and Sal stood on the threshold. “You fellers like a cold bottle of beer?”

  Guy was impatient at this interruption, but then he had to smile. There were few who could not smile at Sal. She was forty-three years old and short and plump and as downy as a peach and resembled a rosy peach, slightly browned by the sun, and ripe, and full of sweet juices. She was not in the least pretty; in fact, she appeared very earthy and more than a little coarse. But her round face was gay and cheerful and she was always either smiling widely or laughing, and her spherical brown eyes, with their rowdy expression and intimation of innocent lewdness, were very endearing. She had a short thick nose and a jolly full red mouth filled with small glistening white teeth, which seemed to twinkle with mirth all the time. Her bosom was very ample and strained against her blue cotton dress, and her hips were broad and ample also. Her hands were short and broad, showing signs of constant labor. Her hair was an untidy mess of curling dark hair, always
spilling about her glowing cheeks in tendrils which crackled with exuberance and vitality. There was a lust for life about her, a bountiful lust for living and for giving, and the vivacity of lush summer, fruitful and warm.

  Tom turned, as he sat on the steps, and patted and pinched her bottom. He said, “Sure, we’d like a cold beer, Sal.” His thin browned face was alert with love and humor for this almost illiterate farm woman who had never read a book in her life and who was engrossed, when at leisure, with the radio, and with food. She ate as heartily as she lived, and drank happily with Tom, and was an enthusiastic bed partner who kept Tom as vital as a youth, and as potent. Whatever he wished to do she was joyful to do also; she never complained and never was petulant or sulky. Health leapt out of her like a fountain, inexhaustible. She was, as Tom had often said, truly a woman, lustful and romping and kind, buoyant and, always, alive. Her conversations with Tom might be without depth or literacy, but she had the strong wisdom of a loving woman, and a certain sprightly bawdiness. Her laugh might be too loud and raucous, but it was the laughter of spring, without sniggering, and without restraint. Malice was unknown to her; she had a humorous attitude towards the world. “Hell, Tom,” she would say. “The only thing is to be happy. Anything else is an insult to the good Lord, even if you are in pain, or something, and things go wrong. You gotta trust Him.”

  She was truly religious, as Tom often remarked. Her love for God was as simple as an animal’s, and as accepting. She was aware of evil, as she was aware of cold dark winters without life, but she waited it out and greeted the end of it with laughing thanksgiving, and without resentment, and rejoiced in each day. She never condemned anyone, not because she was charitable but because she knew nothing of condemnation, and was incapable of it.

  Guy thought of what his mother often said harshly and with bitterness of Sal: “A bad bold woman with no more morals than a mink. Well, God will judge her, and she’ll deserve the judgment. She was always a scandal since she was fourteen years old. She’s just right for your pa, and all he deserves. A woman with her reputation, all bad. She’s disgusting. But so’s your pa.”