Look Homeward, Angel

by Thomas Wolfe

  Eugene came up into the hills again and found them in their rich young summer glory. Dixieland was partly filled by paying guests. More arrived.

  Eugene was sixteen years old. He was a College Man. He walked among the gay crowd of afternoon with a sense of elation, answering the hearty greetings with joy, warming to its thoughtless bombast.

  "They tell me you're batting a thousand down there, son," yelled Mr. Wood, the plump young pharmacist, who had been told nothing at all. "That's right, boy! Go get 'em." The man passed forward cheerfully, up the prosperous glade of his store. Fans droned.

  After all, Eugene thought, he had not done so badly. He had felt his first wounds. He had not been broken. He had seen love's bitter mystery. He had lived alone.

  30

  There was at Dixieland a girl named Laura James. She was twenty-one years old. She looked younger. She was there when he came back.

  Laura was a slender girl, of medium height, but looking taller than she was. She was very firmly moulded: she seemed fresh and washed and clean. She had thick hair, very straight and blonde, combed in a flat bracelet around her small head. Her face was white, with small freckles. Her eyes were soft, candid, cat-green. He nose was a little too large for her face: it was tilted. She was not pretty. She dressed very simply and elegantly in short plaid skirts and waists of knitted silk.

  She was the only young person at Dixieland. Eugene spoke to her with timid hauteur. He thought her plain and dull. But he began to sit with her on the porch at night. Somehow, he began to love her.

  He did not know that he loved her. He talked to her arrogantly and boastfully as they sat in the wooden porch-swing. But he breathed the clean perfume of her marvellous young body. He was trapped in the tender cruelty of her clear green eyes, caught in the subtle net of her smile.

  Laura James lived in the eastern part of the State, far east even of Pulpit Hill, in a little town built on a salt river of the great coastal plain. Her father was a wealthy merchant--a wholesale provisioner. The girl was an only child: she spent extravagantly.

  Eugene sat on the porch rail one evening and talked to her. Before, he had only nodded, or spoken stiffly a word or two. They began haltingly, aware painfully of gaps in their conversation.

  "You're from Little Richmond, aren't you?" he said.

  "Yes," said Laura James, "do you know any one from there?"

  "Yes," said he, "I know John Bynum and a boy named Ficklen. They're from Little Richmond, aren't they?"

  "Oh, Dave Ficklen! Do you know him? Yes. They both go to Pulpit Hill. Do you go there?"

  "Yes," he said, "that's where I knew them."

  "Do you know the two Barlow boys? They're Sigma Nus," said Laura James.

  He had seen them. They were great swells, football men.

  "Yes, I know them," he said, "Roy Barlow and Jack Barlow."

  "Do you know 'Snooks' Warren? He's a Kappa Sig."

  "Yes. They call them Keg Squeezers," said Eugene.

  "What fraternity are you?" said Laura James.

  "I'm not any," he said painfully. "I was just a Freshman this year."

  "Some of the best friends I have never joined fraternities," said Laura James.

  They met more and more frequently, without arrangement, until by silent consent they met every night upon the porch. Sometimes they walked along the cool dark streets. Sometimes he squired her clumsily through the town, to the movies, and later, with the uneasy pugnacity of youth, past the loafing cluster at Wood's. Often he took her to Woodson Street, where Helen secured for him the cool privacy of the veranda. She was very fond of Laura James.

  "She's a nice girl. A lovely girl. I like her. She's not going to take any beauty prizes, is she?" She laughed with a trace of

  good-natured ridicule.

  He was displeased.

  "She looks all right," he said. "She's not as ugly as you make out."

  But she WAS ugly--with a clean lovely ugliness. Her face was freckled lightly, over her nose and mouth: her features were eager, unconscious, turned upward in irregular pertness. But she was exquisitely made and exquisitely kept: she had the firm young line of Spring, budding, slender, virginal. She was like something swift, with wings, which hovers in a wood--among the feathery trees suspected, but uncaught, unseen.

  He tried to live before her in armor. He showed off before her. Perhaps, he thought, if he were splendid enough, she would not see the ugly disorder and meanness of the world he dwelt in.

  Across the street, on the wide lawn of the Brunswick--the big brick gabled house that Eliza once had coveted--Mr. Pratt, who crawled in that mean world in which only a boarding-house husband can exist, was watering wide green spaces of lawn with a hose. The flashing water motes gleamed in the red glare of sunset. The red light fell across the shaven pinched face. It glittered on the buckles of his arm-bands. Across the walk, on the other lobe of grass, several men and women were playing croquet. There was laughter on the vine-hid porch. Next door, at the Belton, the boarders were assembled on the long porch in bright hashhouse chatter. The comedian of the Dixie Ramblers arrived with two chorus girls. He was a little man, with the face of a weasel and no upper teeth. He wore a straw hat with a striped band, and a blue shirt and collar. The boarders gathered in around him. In a moment there was shrill laughter.

  Julius Arthur sped swiftly down the hill, driving his father home. He grinned squintily and flung his arm up in careless greeting. The prosperous lawyer twisted a plump Van Dyked face on a wry neck curiously. Unsmiling, he passed.

  A negress in the Brunswick struck on the several bells of a Japanese gong. There was a scramble of feet on the porch; the croquet players dropped their mallets and walked rapidly toward the house. Pratt wound his hose over a wooden reel.

  A slow bell-clapper in the Belton sent the guests in a scrambling drive for the doors. In a moment there was a clatter of heavy plates and a loud foody noise. The guests on the porch at Dixieland rocked more rapidly, with low mutters of discontent.

  Eugene talked to Laura in thickening dusk, sheeting his pain in pride and indifference. Eliza's face, a white blur in the dark,

  came up behind the screen.

  "Come on out, Mrs. Gant, and get a breath of fresh air," said Laura James.

  "Why no-o, child. I can't now. Who's that with you?" she cried, obviously flustered. She opened the door. "Huh? Heh? Have you seen 'Gene? Is it 'Gene?"

  "Yes," he said. "What's the matter?"

  "Come here a minute, boy," she said.

  He went into the hall.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "Why, son, what in the world! I don't know. You'll have to do something," she whispered, twisting her hands together.

  "What is it, mama? What are you talking about?" he cried irritably.

  "Why--Jannadeau's just called up. Your papa's on a rampage again and he's coming this way. Child! There's no telling what he'll do. I've all these people in the house. He'll ruin us." She wept. "Go and try to stop him. Head him off if you can. Take him to Woodson Street."

  He got his hat quickly and ran through the door.

  "Where are you going?" asked Laura James. "Are you going off without supper?"

  "I've got to go to town," he said. "I won't be long. Will you wait for me?"

  "Yes," she said.

  He leaped down on the walk just as his father lurched in from the street by the high obscuring hedge that shut the house from the spacious yard of the attorney Hall. Gant reeled destructively, across a border of lilies, on to the lawn, and strode for the veranda. He stumbled, cursing, on the bottom step and plunged forward in a sprawl upon the porch. The boy jumped for him, and half dragged, half lifted his great drunken body erect. The boarders shrank into a huddle with a quick scattering of chairs: he greeted them with a laugh of howling contempt.

  "Are you there? I say, are you there? The lowest of the low--boarding-house swine! Merciful God! What a travesty! A travesty on Nature! That it should come to this!"

  He burst
into a long peal of maniacal laughter.

  "Papa! Come on!" said Eugene in a low voice. He took his father cautiously by the sleeve. Gant flung him half across the porch with a gesture of his hand. As he stepped in again swiftly, his father struck at him with a flailing arm. He evaded the great mowing fist without trouble, and caught the falling body, swung from its own pivot, in his arms. Then quickly, before Gant could recover, holding him from behind, he rushed him toward the door. The boarders scattered away like sparrows. But Laura James was at the screen before him: she flung it open.

  "Get away! Get away!" he cried, full of shame and anger. "You stay out of this." For a moment he despised her for seeing his hurt.

  "Oh, let me help you, my dear," Laura James whispered. Her eyes were wet, but she was not afraid.

  Father and son plunged chaotically down the wide dark hall, Eliza, weeping and making gestures, just before them.

  "Take him in here, boy. Take him in here," she whispered, motioning to a large bed-room on the upper side of the house. Eugene propelled his father through a blind passage of bath room, and pushed him over on the creaking width of an iron bed.

  "You damned scoundrel!" Gant yelled, again trying to reap him down with the long arm, "let me up or I'll kill you!"

  "For God's sake, papa," he implored angrily, "try to quiet down. Every one in town can hear you."

  "To hell with them!" Gant roared. "Mountain Grills--all of them, fattening upon my heart's-blood. They have done me to death, as sure as there's a God in heaven."

  Eliza appeared in the door, her face contorted by weeping.

  "Son, can't you do something to stop him?" she said. "He'll ruin us all. He'll drive every one away."

  Gant struggled to stand erect when he saw her. Her white face stirred him to insanity.

  "There it is! There! There! Do you see! The fiend-face I know so well, gloating upon my misery. Look at it! Look! Do you see its smile of evil cunning? Greeley, Will, The Hog, The Old Major! The Tax Collector will get it all, and I shall die in the gutter!"

  "If it hadn't been for me," Eliza began, stung to retaliation, "you'd have died there long ago."

  "Mama, for God's sake!" the boy cried. "Don't stand there talking to him! Can't you see what it does to him! Do something, in heaven's name! Get Helen! Where is she?"

  "I'll make an end to it all!" Gant yelled, staggering erect. "I'll do for us both now."

  Eliza vanished.

  "Yes, sir, papa. It's going to be all right," Eugene began soothingly, pushing him back on the bed again. He dropped quickly to his knees, and began to draw off one of Gant's soft tongueless shoes, muttering reassurances all the time: "Yes, sir. We'll get you some good hot soup and put you to bed in a jiffy. Everything's going to be all right," the shoe came off in his hand and, aided by the furious thrust of his father's foot, he went sprawling back.

  Gant got to his feet again and, taking a farewell kick at his fallen son, lunged toward the door. Eugene scrambled up quickly, and leaped after him. The two men fell heavily into the roughly grained plaster of the wall. Gant cursed, flailing about clumsily at his tormentor. Helen came in.

  "Baby!" Gant wept, "they're trying to kill me. O Jesus, do something to save me, or I perish."

  "You get back in that bed," she commanded sharply, "or I'll knock your head off."

  Very obediently he suffered himself to be led back to bed and undressed. In a few minutes she was sitting beside him with a bowl of smoking soup. He grinned sheepishly as she spooned it into his opened mouth. She laughed--almost happily--thinking of the lost and irrevocable years. Suddenly, before he slept, he lifted himself strongly from the pillows that propped him, and with staring eyes, called out in savage terror:

  "Is it a cancer? I say, is it a cancer?"

  "Hush!" she cried. "No. Of course not! Don't be foolish."

  He fell back exhausted, with eyes closed. But they knew that it was. He had never been told. The terrible name of his malady was never uttered save by him. And in his heart he knew--what they all knew and never spoke of before him--that it was, it was a cancer. All day, with fear-stark eyes, Gant had sat, like a broken statue, among his marbles, drinking. It was a cancer.

  The boy's right hand bled very badly across the wrist, where his father's weight had ground it into the wall.

  "Go wash it off," said Helen. "I'll tie it up for you."

  He went into the dark bathroom and held his hand under a jet of lukewarm water. A very quiet despair was in his heart, a weary peace that brooded too upon the house of death and tumult, that flowed, like a soft exploring wind, through its dark halls, bathing all things quietly with peace and weariness. The boarders had fled like silly sheep to the two houses across the street: they had eaten there, they were clustered there upon the porches, whispering. And their going brought him peace and freedom, as if his limbs had been freed from a shackling weight. Eliza, amid the slow smoke of the kitchen, wept more quietly over the waste of supper; he saw the black mournful calm of the negress's face. He walked slowly up the dark hall, with a handkerchief tied looselyround his wound. He felt suddenly the peace that comes with despair. The sword that pierces very deep had fared through the folds of his poor armor of pride. The steel had sheared his side, had bitten to his heart. But under his armor he had found himself. No more than himself could be known. No more than himself could be given. What he was--he was: evasion and pretense could not add to his sum. With all his heart he was glad.

  By the door, in the darkness, he found Laura James.

  "I thought you had gone with the others," he said.

  "No," said Laura James, "how is your father?"

  "He's all right now. He's gone to sleep," he answered. "Have you had anything to eat?"

  "No," she said, "I didn't want it."

  "I'll bring you something from the kitchen," he said. "There's plenty there." In a moment he added: "I'm sorry, Laura."

  "What are you sorry for?" she asked.

  He leaned against the wall limply, drained of his strength at her touch.

  "Eugene. My dear," she said. She pulled his drooping face down to her lips and kissed him. "My sweet, my darling, don't look like that."

  All his resistance melted from him. He seized her small hands, crushing them in his hot fingers, and devouring them with kisses.

  "My dear Laura! My dear Laura!" he said in a choking voice. "My sweet, my beautiful Laura! My lovely Laura. I love you. I love you." The words rushed from his heart, incoherent, unashamed, foaming through the broken levees of pride and silence. They clung together in the dark, with their wet faces pressed mouth to mouth. Her perfume went drunkenly to his brain; her touch upon him shot through his limbs a glow of magic; he felt the pressure of her narrow breasts, eager and lithe, against him with a sense of fear--as if he had dishonored her--with a sickening remembrance of his defilement.

  He held between his hands her elegant small head, so gloriously wound with its thick bracelet of fine blonde hair, and spoke the words he had never spoken--the words of confession, filled with love and humility.

  "Don't go! Don't go! Please don't go!" he begged. "Don't leave, dear. Please!"

  "Hush!" she whispered. "I won't go! I love you, my dear."

  She saw his hand, wrapped in its bloody bandage; she nursed it gently with soft little cries of tenderness. She fetched a bottle of iodine from her room and painted the stinging cut with a brush. She wrapped it with clean strips of fine white cloth, torn from an old waist, scented with a faint and subtle perfume.

  Then they sat upon the wooden swing. The house seemed to sleep in darkness. Helen and Eliza came presently from its very quiet depth.

  "How's your hand, 'Gene?" Helen asked.

  "It's all right," he said.

  "Let me see! O-ho, you've got a nurse now, haven't you?" she said, with a good laugh.

  "What's that? What's that? Hurt his hand? How'd you do that? Why, here--say--I've got the very thing for it, son," said Eliza, trying to bustle off in all directions.

/>   "Oh, it's all right now, mama. It's been fixed," he said wearily, reflecting that she had the very thing always too late. He looked at Helen grinning:

  "God bless our Happy Home!" he said.

  "Poor old Laura!" she laughed, and hugged the girl roughly with one hand. "It's too bad you have to be dragged into it."

  "That's all right," said Laura. "I feel like one of the family now anyhow."

  "He needn't think he can carry on like this," said Eliza resentfully. "I'm not going to put up with it any longer."

  "Oh forget about it!" said Helen wearily. "Good heavens, mama. Papa's a sick man. Can't you realize that?"

  "Pshaw!" said Eliza scornfully. "I don't believe there's a thing in the world wrong with him but that vile licker. All his trouble comes from that."

  "Oh--how ridiculous! How ridiculous! You can't tell me!" Helen exclaimed angrily.

  "Let's talk about the weather," said Eugene.

  Then they all sat quietly, letting the darkness soak into them. Finally Helen and Eliza went back into the house: Eliza went unwillingly, at the girl's insistence, casting back the doubtful glimmer of her face upon the boy and girl.

  The wasting helve of the moon rode into heaven over the bulk of the hills. There was a smell of wet grass and lilac, and the vast brooding symphony of the million-noted little night things, rising and falling in a constant ululation, and inhabiting the heart with steady unconscious certitude. The pallid light drowned out the stars, it lay like silence on the earth, it dripped through the leafy web of the young maples, printing the earth with swarming moths of elvish light.

  Eugene and Laura sat with joined hands in the slowly creaking swing. Her touch shot through him like a train of fire: as he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her over to him, his fingers touched the live firm cup of her breast. He jerked his hand away, as if he had been stung, muttering an apology. Whenever she touched him, his flesh got numb and weak. She was a virgin, crisp like celery--his heart shrank away from the pollution of his touch upon her. It seemed to him that he was much the older, although he was sixteen, and she twenty-one. He felt the age of his loneliness and his dark perception. He felt the gray wisdom of sin--a waste desert, but seen and known. When he held her hand, he felt as if he had already seduced her. She lifted her lovely face to him, pert and ugly as a boy's; it was inhabited by a true and steadfast decency, and his eyes were wet. All the young beauty in the world dwelt for him in that face that had kept wonder, that had kept innocency, that had lived in such immortal blindness to the terror and foulness of the world. He came to her, like a creature who had travelled its life through dark space, for a moment of peace and conviction on some lonely planet, where now he stood, in the vast enchanted plain of moonlight, with moonlight falling on the moonflower of her face. For if a man should dream of heaven and, waking, find within his hand a flower as token that he had really been there--what then, what then?