by Thomas Wolfe
"We oughtn't to talk like that, 'Gene," said George Graves reproachfully. "Sure enough! It's not right."
He became moodily serious rapidly. "The best people in this town are church members," he said earnestly. "It's a fine thing."
"Why?" said Eugene, with an idle curiosity.
"Because," said George Graves, "you get to know all the people who are worth a damn."
Worth being damned, he thought quickly. A quaint idea.
"It helps you in a business way. They come to know you and respect you. You won't get far in this town, 'Gene, without them. It pays," he added devoutly, "to be a Christian."
"Yes," Eugene agreed seriously, "you're right." To walk together to the kirk, with a goodly company.
He thought sadly of his lost sobriety, and of how once, lonely, he had walked the decent lanes of God's Scotch town. Unbidden they came again to haunt his memory, the shaven faces of good tradesmen, each leading the well washed kingdom of his home in its obedient ritual the lean hushed smiles of worship, the chained passion of devotion, as they implored God's love upon their ventures, or delivered their virgin daughters into the holy barter of marriage. And from even deeper adyts of his brain there swam up slowly to the shores of his old hunger the great fish whose names he scarcely knew--whose names, garnered with blind toil from a thousand books, from Augustine, himself a name, to Jeremy Taylor, the English metaphysician, were brief evocations of scalded light, electric, phosphorescent, illuminating by their magic connotations the vast far depths of ritual and religion: They came?Bartholomew, Hilarius, Chrysostomos, Polycarp, Anthony, Jerome, and the forty martyrs of Cappadocia who walked the waves--coiled like their own green shadows for a moment, and were gone.
"Besides," said George Graves, "a man ought to go anyway. Honesty's the best policy."
Across the street, on the second floor of a small brick three-story building that housed several members of the legal, medical, surgical, and dental professions, Dr. H. M. Smathers pumped vigorously with his right foot, took a wad of cotton from his assistant, Miss Lola Bruce, and thrusting it securely into the jaw of the unseen patient, bent his fashionable bald head intently. A tiny breeze blew back the thin curtains, and revealed him, white-jacketed, competent, drill in hand.
"Do you feel that?" he said tenderly.
"Wrogd gdo gurk!"
"Spit!" With thee conversing, I forget all time.
"I suppose," said George Graves thoughtfully, "the gold they use in people's teeth is worth a lot of money."
"Yes," said Eugene, finding the idea attractive, "if only one person in ten has gold fillings that would be ten million in the United States alone. You can figure on five dollars' worth each, can't you?"
"Easy!" said George Graves. "More than that." He brooded lusciously a moment. "That's a lot of money," he said.
In the office of the Rogers-Malone Undertaking Establishment the painful family of death was assembled, "Horse" Hines, tilted back in a swivel chair, with his feet thrust out on the broad window-ledge, chatted lazily with Mr. C. M. Powell, the suave silent partner. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest. Forget not yet.
"There's good money in undertaking," said George Graves. "Mr. Powell's well off."
Eugene's eyes were glued on the lantern face of "Horse" Hines. He beat the air with a convulsive arm, and sank his fingers in his throat.
"What's the matter?" cried George Graves.
"They shall not bury me alive," he said.
"You can't tell," George Graves said gloomily. "It's been known to happen. They've dug them up later and found them turned over on their faces."
Eugene shuddered. "I think," he suggested painfully, "they're supposed to take out your insides when they embalm you."
"Yes," said George Graves more hopefully, "and that stuff they use would kill you anyway. They pump you full of it."
With shrunken heart, Eugene considered. The ghost of old fear, that had been laid for years, walked forth to haunt him.
In his old fantasies of death he had watched his living burial, had foreseen his waking life-in-death, his slow, frustrated efforts to push away the smothering flood of earth until, as a drowning swimmer claws the air, his mute and stiffened fingers thrust from the ground a call for hands.
Fascinated, they stared through screen-doors down the dark central corridor, flanked by jars of weeping ferns. A sweet funereal odor of carnations and cedar-wood floated on the cool heavy air. Dimly, beyond a central partition, they saw a heavy casket, on a wheeled trestle, with rich silver handles and velvet coverings. The thick light faded there in dark.
"They're laid out in the room behind," said George Graves, lowering his voice.
To rot away into a flower, to melt into a tree with the friendless bodies of unburied men.
At this moment, having given to misery all he had (a tear), the very Reverend Father James O'Haley, S.J., among the faithless faithful only he, unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, emerged plumply from the chapel, walked up the soft aisle rug with brisk short- legged strides, and came out into the light. His pale blue eyes blinked rapidly for a moment, his plump uncreased face set firmly in a smile of quiet benevolence; he covered himself with a small well-kept hat of black velvet, and set off toward the avenue. Eugene shrank back gently as the little man walked past him: that small priestly figure in black bore on him the awful accolade of his great Mistress, that smooth face had heard the unutterable, seen the unknowable. In this remote outpost of the mighty Church, he was the standard-bearer of the one true faith, the consecrate flesh of God.
"They don't get any pay," said George Graves sorrowfully.
"How do they live, then?" Eugene asked.
"Don't you worry!" said George Graves, with a knowing smile.
"They get all that's coming to them. He doesn't seem to be starving, does he?"
"No," said Eugene, "he doesn't."
"He lives on the fat of the land," said George Graves. "Wine at every meal. There are some rich Catholics in this town."
"Yes," said Eugene. "Frank Moriarty's got a pot full of money that he made selling licker."
"Don't let them hear you," said George Graves, with a surly laugh. "They've got a family tree and a coat of arms already."
"A beer-bottle rampant on a field of limburger cheese, gules," said Eugene.
"They're trying to get the Princess Madeleine into Society," said George Graves.
"Hell fire!" Eugene cried, grinning. "Let's let her in, if that's all she wants. We belong to the Younger Set, don't we?"
"You may," said George Graves, reeling with laughter, "but I don't. I wouldn't be caught dead with the little pimps."
"Mr. Eugene Gant was the host last night at a hot wienie roast given to members of the local Younger Set at Dixieland, the beautiful old ancestral mansion of his mother, Mrs. Eliza Gant."
George Graves staggered. "You oughtn't to say that, 'Gene," he gasped. He shook his head reproachfully. "Your mother's a fine woman."
"During the course of the evening, the Honorable George Graves, the talented scion of one of our oldest and wealthiest families, the Chesterfield Graveses, ($10 a week and up), rendered a few appropriate selections on the jews-harp."
Pausing deliberately, George Graves wiped his streaming eyes, and blew his nose. In the windows of Bain's millinery store, a waxen nymph bore a confection of rakish plumes upon her false tresses, and extended her simpering fingers in elegant counterpoise. Hats For Milady. O that those lips had language.
At this moment, with a smooth friction of trotting rumps, the death-wagon of Rogers-Malone turned swiftly in from the avenue, and wheeled by on ringing hoofs. They turned curiously and watched it draw up to the curb.
"Another Redskin bit the dust," said George Graves.
Come, delicate death, serenely arriving, arriving.
"Horse" Hines came out quickly on long flapping legs, and opened the doors behind. In another moment, with the help of the two men on the driver's seat, he had lowered the long wicker basket
gently, and vanished, quietly, gravely, into the fragrant gloom of his establishment.
As Eugene watched, the old fatality of place returned. Each day, he thought, we pass the spot where some day we must die; or shall I, too, ride dead to some mean building yet unknown? Shall this bright clay, the hill-bound, die in lodgings yet unbuilt? Shall these eyes, drenched with visions yet unseen, stored with the viscous and interminable seas at dawn, with the sad comfort of unfulfilled Arcadias, seal up their cold dead dreams upon a tick, as this, in time, in some hot village of the plains?
He caught and fixed the instant. A telegraph messenger wheeled vigorously in from the avenue with pumping feet, curved widely into the alley at his right, jerking his wheel up sharply as he took the curb and coasted down to the delivery boy's entrance. And post o'er land and ocean without rest. Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
Descending the dark stairs of the Medical Building slowly, Mrs. Thomas Hewitt, the comely wife of the prominent attorney (of Arthur, Hewitt, and Grey), turned out into the light, and advanced slowly toward the avenue. She was greeted with flourishing gestures of the hat by Henry T. Merriman (Merriman and Merriman), and Judge Robert C. Allan, professional colleagues of her husband. She smiled and shot each quickly with a glance. Pleasant is this flesh. When she had passed they looked after her a moment. Then they continued their discussion of the courts.
On the third floor of the First National Bank building on the right hand corner, Fergus Paston, fifty-six, a thin lecherous mouth between iron-gray dundrearies, leaned his cocked leg upon his open window, and followed the movements of Miss Bernie Powers, twenty-two, crossing the street. Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
On the opposite corner, Mrs. Roland Rawls, whose husband was manager of the Peerless Pulp Company (Plant No. 3), and whose father owned it, emerged from the rich seclusion of Arthur N. Wright, jeweller. She clasped her silver mesh-bag and stepped into her attendant Packard. She was a tall black-haired woman of thirty-three with a good figure: her face was dull, flat, and Mid-western.
"She's the one with the money," said George Graves. "He hasn't a damn thing. It's all in her name. She wants to be an opera singer."
"Can she sing?"
"Not worth a damn," said George Graves. "I've heard her. There's your chance, 'Gene. She's got a daughter about your age."
"What does she do?" said Eugene.
"She wants to be an actress," said George Graves, laughing throatily.
"You have to work too damn hard for your money," said Eugene.
They had reached the corner by the Bank, and now halted, indecisively, looking up the cool gulch of afternoon. The street buzzed with a light gay swarm of idlers: the faces of the virgins bloomed in and out like petals on a bough. Advancing upon him, an inch to the second, Eugene saw, ten feet away, the heavy paralyzed body of old Mr. Avery. He was a very great scholar, stone-deaf, and seventy-eight years old. He lived alone in a room above the Public Library. He had neither friends nor connections. He was a myth.
"Oh, my God!" said Eugene. "Here he comes!"
It was too late for escape.
Gasping a welcome, Mr. Avery bore down on him, with a violent shuffle of his feet and a palsied tattoo of his heavy stick which brought him over the intervening three yards in forty seconds.
"Well, young fellow," he panted, "how's Latin?"
"Fine," Eugene screamed into his pink ear.
"Poeta nascitur, non fit," said Mr. Avery, and went off into a silent wheeze of laughter which brought on a fit of coughing strangulation. His eyes bulged, his tender pink skin grew crimson, he roared his terror out in a phlegmy rattle, while his goose-white hand trembled frantically for his handkerchief. A crowd gathered. Eugene quickly drew a dirty handkerchief from the old man's pocket, and thrust it into his hands. He tore up from his convulsed organs a rotting mass, and panted rapidly for breath. The crowd dispersed somewhat dejectedly.
George Graves grinned darkly. "That's too bad," he said. "You oughtn't to laugh, 'Gene." He turned away, gurgling.
"Can you conjugate?" gasped Mr. Avery. "Here's the way I learned:
"Amo, amas,
I love a lass.
Amat,
He loves her, too."
Quivering with tremors of laughter, he launched himself again. Because he could not leave them, save by the inch, they moved off several yards to the curb. Grow old along with me!
"That's a damn shame," said George Graves, looking after him and shaking his head. "Where's he going?"
"To supper," said Eugene.
"To supper!" said George Graves. "It's only four o'clock. Where does he eat?"
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.
"At the Uneeda," said Eugene, beginning to choke, "It takes him two hours to get there."
"Does he go every day?" said George Graves, beginning to laugh.
"Three times a day," Eugene screamed. "He spends all morning going to dinner, and all afternoon going to supper."
A whisper of laughter came from their weary jaws. They sighed like sedge.
At this moment, dodging briskly through the crowd, with a loud and cheerful word for every one, Mr. Joseph Bailey, secretary of the Altamont Chamber of Commerce, short, broad, and ruddy, came up by them with a hearty gesture of the hand:
"Hello, boys!" he cried. "How're they going?" But before either of them could answer, he had passed on, with an encouraging shake of his head, and a deep applauding "THAT'S right."
"WHAT'S right?" said Eugene.
But before George Graves could answer, the great lung specialist, Dr. Fairfax Grinder, scion of one of the oldest and proudest families in Virginia, drove in viciously from Church Street, with his sinewy length of six feet and eight inches coiled tensely in the deep pit of his big Buick roadster. Cursing generally the whole crawling itch of Confederate and Yankee postwar rabbledom, with a few special parentheses for Jews and niggers, he drove full tilt at the short plump figure of Joe Zamschnick, men's furnishings ("Just a Whisper Off The Square").
Joseph, two yards away from legal safety, hurled himself with a wild scream headlong at the curb. He arrived on hands and knees, but under his own power.
"K-hurses!" said Eugene. "Foiled again."
'Twas true! Dr. Fairfax Grinder's lean bristled upper lip drew back over his strong yellow teeth. He jammed on his brakes, and lifted his car round with a complete revolution of his long arms. Then he roared away through scattering traffic, in a greasy blue cloud of gasoline and burnt rubber.
Joe Zamschnick frantically wiped his gleaming bald head with a silk handkerchief and called loudly on the public to bear witness.
"What's the matter with him?" said George Graves, disappointed. "He usually goes up on the sidewalk after them if he can't get them on the street."
On the other side of the street, attracting no more than a languid stare from the loafing natives, the Honorable William Jennings Bryan paused benevolently before the windows of the H. Martin Grimes Bookstore, allowing the frisking breeze to toy pleasantly with his famous locks. The tangles of Neaera's hair.
The Commoner stared carefully at the window display which included several copies of Before Adam, by Jack London. Then he entered, and selected a dozen views of Altamont and the surrounding hills.
"He may come here to live," said George Graves. "Dr. Doak's offered to give him a house and lot in Doak Park."
"Why?" said Eugene.
"Because the advertising will be worth a lot to the town," said George Graves.
A little before them, that undaunted daughter of desires, Miss Elizabeth Scragg, emerged from Woolworth's Five and Ten Cent Store, and turned up toward the Square. Smiling, she acknowledged the ponderous salute of Big Jeff White, the giant half-owner of the Whitstone hotel, whose fortunes had begun when he had refused to return to his old comrade, Dickson Reese, the embezzling cashier, ninety thousand dollars of entrusted loot. Dog eat dog. Thief catch thief. It is not growing like a tree, in bulk doth make man better be.<
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His six-and-a-half-foot shadow flitted slowly before them. He passed, in creaking number twelves, a massive smooth-jowled man with a great paunch girdled in a wide belt.
Across the street again, before the windows of the Van W. Yeats Shoe Company, the Reverend J. Brooks Gall, Amherst ('61), and as loyal a Deke as ever breathed, but looking only sixty of his seventy-three years, paused in his brisk walk, and engaged in sprightly monologue, three of his fellow Boy Scouts--the Messrs. Lewis Monk, seventeen, Bruce Rogers, thirteen, and Malcolm Hodges, fourteen. None knew as well as he the heart of a boy. He, too, it seems, had once been one himself. Thus, as one bright anecdote succeeded, or suggested, a half-dozen others, they smiled dutifully, with attentive respect, below the lifted barrier of his bristly white mustache, into the gleaming rhyme of his false teeth. And, with rough but affectionate camaraderie, he would pause from time to time to say: "Old Male!" or "Old Bruce!" gripping firmly his listener's arm, shaking him gently. Pallidly, on restless feet, they smiled, plotting escape with slant-eyed stealth.
Mr. Buse, the Oriental rug merchant, came around the corner below them from Liberty Street. His broad dark face was wreathed in Persian smiles. I met a traveller from an antique land.
In the Bijou Cafe for Ladies and Gents, Mike, the counter man, leaned his hairy arms upon the marble slab, and bent his wrinkled inch of brow upon a week-old copy of Atlantis. Fride Chicken To-day with Sweet Potatos. Hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert. A solitary fly darted swiftly about the greasy cover of a glass humidor, under which a leathery quarter of mince pie lay weltering. Spring had come.
Meanwhile, having completed twice their parade up and down the street from the Square to the post-office, the Misses Christine Ball, Viola Powell, Aline Rollins, and Dorothy Hazzard were accosted outside Wood's Drug Store by Tom French, seventeen, Roy Duncan, nineteen, and Carl Jones, eighteen.
"Where do you think you're going?" said Tom French, insolently.
Gayly, brightly, in unison, they answered:
"Hey--ee!"
"Hay's seven dollars a ton," said Roy Duncan, and immediately burst into a high cackle of laughter, in which all the others joined, merrily.