Look Homeward, Angel

by Thomas Wolfe

  Eugene stood up in the car and waved his long arm in a gesture of farewell.

  "Good-bye," he cried. "Good-bye."

  The old man stood up with a quiet salute of parting, slow, calm, eloquently tender.

  Then, even while Eugene stood looking back upon the street, the car roared up across the lip of the hill, and drove steeply down into the hot parched countryside below. But as the lost world faded from his sight, Eugene gave a great cry of pain and sadness, for he knew that the elfin door had closed behind him, and that he would never come back again.

  He saw the vast rich body of the hills, lush with billowing greenery, ripe-bosomed, dappled by far-floating cloud-shadows. But it was, he knew, the end.

  Far-forested, the horn-note wound. He was wild with the hunger for release: the vast champaign of earth stretched out for him its limitless seduction.

  It was the end, the end. It was the beginning of the voyage, thequest of new lands.

  Gant was dead. Gant was living, death-in-life. In his big back room at Eliza's he waited death, lost and broken in a semi-life of petulant memory. He hung to life by a decayed filament, a corpse lit by infrequent flares of consciousness. The sudden death whose menace they had faced so long that it had lost its meaning, had never come to him. It had come where they had least expected it--to Ben. And the conviction which Eugene had had at Ben's death, more than a year and a half before, was now a materialized certainty. The great wild pattern of the family had been broken forever. The partial discipline that had held them together had been destroyed by the death of their brother: the nightmare of waste and loss had destroyed their hope. With an insane fatalism they had surrendered to the savage chaos of life.

  Except for Eliza. She was sixty, sound of body and mind, triumphantly healthy. She still ran Dixieland, but she had given up the boarders for roomers, and most of the duties of management she intrusted to an old maid who lived in the house. Eliza devoted most of her time to real estate.

  She had, during the past year, got final control of Gant's property. She had begun to sell it immediately and ruthlessly, over his indifferent mutter of protest. She had sold the old house on Woodson Street for $7,000--a good enough price, she had said, considering the neighborhood. But, stark, bare, and raw, stripped of its girdling vines, annex now to a quack's sanitarium for "nervous diseases," the rich labor of their life was gone. In this, more than in anything else, Eugene saw the final disintegration of his family.

  Eliza had also sold a wild tract of mountain farmland for $6,000, fifty acres on the Reynoldsville road for $15,000, and several smaller pieces. Finally she had sold Gant's shop upon the Square for $25,000 to a syndicate of real estate people who were going to erect on the site the town's first "skyscraper." With this money as capital, she began to "trade," buying, selling, laying down options, in an intricate and bewildering web.

  "Dixieland" itself had become enormously valuable. The street which she had foreseen years before had been cut through behind her boundaries: she lacked thirty feet of meeting the golden highway, but she had bought the intervening strip, paying without complaint a stiff price. Since then she had refused, with a puckered smile, an offer of $100,000 for her property.

  She was obsessed. She talked real estate unendingly. She spent half her time talking to real estate men; they hovered about the house like flesh-flies. She drove off with them several times a day to look at property. As her land investments grew in amount and number, she became insanely niggardly in personal expenditure. She would fret loudly if a light was kept burning in the house, saying that ruin and poverty faced her. She seldom ate unless the food was given to her; she went about the house holding a cup of weak coffee and a crust of bread. A stingy careless breakfast was the only meal to which Luke and Eugene could look forward with any certainty: with angry guffaw and chortle, they ate, wedged in the little pantry--the dining-room had been turned over to the roomers.

  Gant was fed and cared for by Helen. She moved back and forth in ceaseless fret between Eliza's house and Hugh Barton's, in constant rhythms of wild energy and depletion, anger, hysteria, weariness and indifference. She had had no children and, it seemed, would have none. For this reason, she had long periods of brooding morbidity, during which she drugged herself with nibbling potations of patent tonics, medicines with a high alcoholic content, home-made wines, and corn whiskey. Her large eyes grew lustreless and dull, her big mouth had a strain of hysteria about it, she would pluck at her long chin and burst suddenly into tears. She talked restlessly, fretfully, incessantly, wasting and losing herself in a net of snarled nerves, in endless gossip, incoherent garrulity about the townsfolk, the neighbors, disease, doctors, hospitals, death.

  The deliberate calm of Hugh Barton sometimes goaded her to a frenzy. He would sit at night, oblivious of her tirade, gravely chewing his long cigar, absorbed in his charts, or in a late issue of System or of The American Magazine. This power of losing himself in solitary absorption would madden her. She did not know what she wanted, but his silence before her exasperated indictment of life drove her to frenzy. She would rush at him with a sob of rage, knock the magazine from his hands, and seize his thinning hair in the grip of her long fingers.

  "You answer when I speak!" she cried, panting with hysteria. "I'm not going to sit here, night after night, while you sit buried in a story. The idea! The idea!" She burst into tears. "I might as well have married a dummy."

  "Well, I'm willing to talk to you," he protested sourly, "but nothing I say to you seems to suit you. What do you want me to say?"

  It seemed, indeed, when she was in this temper, that she could not be pleased. She was annoyed and irritable if people agreed carefully with all her utterances; she was annoyed equally by their disagreement and by their silence. A remark about the weather, the most studiously uncontroversial opinion, aroused her annoyance.

  Sometimes at night she would weep hysterically upon her pillow, and turn fiercely upon her mate.

  "Leave me! Go away! Get out! I hate you!"

  He would rise obediently and go downstairs, but before he reached the living-room she would call fearfully after him, asking him to return.

  She lavished kisses and abuse on him by turns: the mothering tenderness, in which she was drowning for want of a child, she poured out on a dirty little mongrel dog which had trotted in from the streets one night, half-dead from starvation. He was a snarling little brute with a rough black-and-white pelt, and an ugly lift of teeth for every one but his master and mistress, but he had grown waddling-fat upon choice meats and livers; he slept warmly on a velvet cushion and rode out with them, snarling at passers-by. She smothered the little cur with slaps and kisses, devoured him with baby-talk, and hated any one who disliked his mongrel viciousness. But most of her time, her love, her blazing energy, she gave to the care of her father. Her feeling toward Eliza was more bitter than ever: it was one of constant chaffering irritability, mounting at times to hatred. She would rail against her mother for hours:

  "I believe she's gone crazy. Don't you think so? Sometimes I think we ought to get guardians appointed and keep her under custody. Do you know that I buy almost every bite of food that goes into that house? Do you? If it weren't for me, she'd let him die right under her eyes. Don't you know she would? She's got so stingy she won't even buy food for herself. Why, good heavens!" she burst out in strong exasperation. "It's not my place to do those things. He's her husband, not mine! Do you think it's right? Do you?" And she would almost weep with rage.

  And she would burst out on Eliza, thus: "Mama, in God's name! Are you going to let that poor old man in there die for lack of proper care? Can't you ever get it into your head that papa's a sick man? He's got to have good food and decent treatment."

  And Eliza, confused and disturbed, would answer: "Why, child! What on earth do you mean? I took him in a big bowl of vegetable soup myself, for his lunch: he ate it all up without stopping. 'Why, pshaw! Mr. Gant,' I said (just to cheer him up), 'I don't believe there can be m
uch wrong with any one with an appetite like that. Why, say,' I said . . ."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake!" cried Helen furiously. "Papa's a sick man. Aren't you ever going to understand that? Surely Ben's death should have taught us something," her voice ended in a scream of exasperation.

  Gant was a spectre in waxen yellow. His disease, which had thrust out its branches to all parts of his body, gave him an appearance of almost transparent delicacy. His mind was sunken out of life in a dim shadowland: he listened wearily and indifferently to all the brawling clamor around him, crying out and weeping when he felt pain, cold, or hunger, smiling when he was comfortable and at ease. He was taken back to Baltimore two or three times a year now for radium treatments: he had a brief flare of vitality and ease after each visit, but every one knew his relief would be only temporary. His body was a rotten fabric which had thus far miraculously held together.

  Meanwhile, Eliza talked incessantly about real estate, bought, sold and traded. About her own ventures she was insanely secretive; she would smile craftily when questioned about them, wink in a knowing fashion, and make a bantering noise in her throat.

  "I'm not telling all I know," she said.

  This goaded her daughter's bitter curiosity almost past endurance, for, despite her angry mockery, the mania for property had bitten into her and Hugh Barton as well: secretly they respected Eliza's shrewdness and got her advice on property into which he was putting all his surplus earnings. But when Eliza refused to reveal her own investments, the girl would cry out in a baffled hysteria:

  "She has no right to do that! Don't you know she hasn't? It's papa's property just as much as hers, you know. If she should die now, that estate would be in a terrible mess. No one knows what she's done: how much she's bought and sold. I don't think she knows herself. She keeps her notes and papers hidden away in little drawers and boxes."

  Her distrust and fear had been so great that, much to Eliza's annoyance, she had persuaded Gant, a year or two before, to make a will: he had left $5,000 to each of his five children, and the remainder of his property and money to his wife. And, as the summer advanced, she again persuaded him to appoint as executors the two people in whose honesty she had the greatest trust: Hugh Barton and Luke Gant.

  To Luke, who, since his discharge from the navy, had been salesman, in the mountain district, for electrical farm-lighting plants, she said:

  "We're the ones who've always had the interests of the family at heart, and we've had nothing for it. We've been the generous ones, but Eugene and Steve will get it all in the end. 'Gene's had everything: we've had nothing. Now he's talking of going to Harvard. Had you heard about that?"

  "His m-m-m-majesty!" said Luke ironically. "Who's going to p-p-p-pay the bills?"

  Thus, as the summer waned, over the slow horror of Gant's death was waged this ugly warfare of greed and hatred. Steve came in from Indiana; within four days he was insane from whiskey and veronal. He began to follow Eugene around the house, backing him ominously into corners, seizing him belligerently by the arm, as he breathed upon him his foul yellow stench, and spoke to him with maudlin challenge.

  "I've never had your chance. Every one was down on Stevie. If he'd had the chance some folks have, he'd be right up there with the Big Boys now. And at that, he's got more brains than a lot of people I know who've been to college. You get that, don't you?"

  He thrust his pustulate face, foul and snarling, close to Eugene's.

  "Get away, Steve! Get away!" the boy muttered. He tried to move, but his brother blocked him. "I tell you to get away, you swine!" he screamed suddenly, and he struck the evil face away from him.

  Then, as Steve sprawled dazed and witless on the floor, Luke sprang upon him with stammering curse, and, past reason, began to drag him up and down. And Eugene sprang upon Luke to stop him, and all three stammered and cursed and begged and accused, while the roomers huddled at the door, and Eliza wept, calling for help, and Daisy, who was up from the South with her children, wrung her plump hands, moaning "Oh, they'll kill him! They'll kill him. Have mercy on me and my poor little children, I beg of you."

  Then the shame, the disgust, the maudlin grievance, the weeping women, the excited men.

  "You m-m-m-miserable degenerate!" cried Luke. "You c-c-came home because you thought p-p-p-papa would die and leave you a little money. You d-d-don't deserve a penny!"

  "I know what you're trying to do," Steve screamed in an agony of suspicion. "You're all against me! You've framed up on me and you're trying to beat me out of my share."

  He was weeping with genuine rage and fear, with the angry suspicion of a beaten child. Eugene looked at him with pity and nausea: he was so foul, whipped, and frightened. Then, with a sense of unreal horror and disbelief, he listened while they bawled out their accusations. This disease of money and greed tainted other people, the people in books, not one's own. They were snarling like curs over one bone--their little shares in the money of an unburied dead man who lay, with low moanings of disease, not thirty feet away.

  The family drew off in two camps of hostile watchfulness: Helen and Luke on one side and Daisy and Steve, subdued but stubborn, on the other. Eugene, who had no talent for parties, cruised through sidereal space with momentary anchorings to earth. He loafed along the avenue, and lounged in Wood's; he gossiped with the pharmacy rakes; he courted the summer girls on boarding-house porches; he visited Roy Brock in a high mountain village, and lay with a handsome girl in the forest; he went to South Carolina; he was seduced by a dentist's wife at Dixieland. She was a prim ugly woman of forty-three, who wore glasses and had sparse hair. She was a Daughter of the Confederacy and wore the badge constantly on

  her starched waists.

  He thought of her only as a very chill and respectable woman. He played Casino--the only game he knew--with her and the other boarders, and called her "ma'am." Then one night she took his hand, saying she would show him how to make love to a girl. She tickled the palm, put it around her waist, lifted it to her breast, and plumped over on his shoulder, breathing stertorously through her pinched nostrils and saying, "God, boy!" over and over. He plunged around the dark cool streets until three in the morning, wondering what he would do about it. Then he came back to the sleeping house, and crept on shoeless feet into her room. Fear and disgust were immediate. He climbed the hills to ease his tortured spirit and stayed away from the house for hours. But she would follow him down the halls or open her door suddenly on him, clad in a red kimono. She became very ugly and bitter, and accused him of betraying, dishonoring, and deserting her. She said that where she came from--the good old State of South Carolina--a man who treated a woman in such fashion would get a bullet in him. Eugene thought of new lands. He was in an agony of repentance and guilty abasement: he framed a long plea for pardon and included it in his prayers at night, for he still prayed, not from devout belief, but from the superstition of habit and number, muttering a set formula over sixteen times, while he held his breath. Since childhood he had believed in the magical efficacy of certain numbers--on Sunday he would do only the second thing that came into his head and not the first--and this intricate ritual of number and prayer he was a slave to, not to propitiate God, but to fulfil a mysterious harmonic relation with the universe, or to pay worship to the demonic force that brooded over him. He could not sleep of nights until he did this.

  Eliza finally grew suspicious of the woman, picked a quarrel with her, and ejected her.

  No one said very much to him about going to Harvard. He himself had no very clear reason for going, and only in September, a few days before the beginning of the term, decided to go. He talked about it at intervals during the summer, but, like all his family, he needed the pressure of immediacy to force a decision. He was offered employment on several newspapers in the State, and on the teaching staff of the run-down military academy that topped a pleasant hill two miles from town.

  But in his heart he knew he was going to leave. And no one opposed him very much. Helen rai
led against him at times to Luke, but made only a few indifferent and unfriendly comments to himself about it. Gant moaned wearily, saying: "Let him do as he likes. I can't pay out any more money on his education. If he wants to go, his mother must send him." Eliza pursed her lips thoughtfully, made a bantering noise, and said:

  "Hm! Harvard! That's mighty big talk, boy. Where are you going to get the money?"

  "I can get it," he said darkly. "People will lend it to me."

  "No, son," she said with instant grave caution. "I don't want you to do anything like that. You mustn't start life by accumulating debts."

  He was silent, trying to force the terrible sentence through his parched lips.

  "Then," he said finally, "why can't I pay my way from my share in papa's estate?"

  "Why, child!" said Eliza angrily. "You talk as if we were millionaires. I don't even know that there's going to be any share for anybody. Your papa was persuaded into that against his better judgment," she added fretfully.

  Eugene began to beat suddenly against his ribs.

  "I want to go!" he said. "I've got to have it now! Now!"

  He was mad with a sense of frustration.

  "I don't want it when I'm rotten! I want it now! To hell with the real estate! I want none of your dirt! I hate it! Let me go!" he screamed; and in his fury he began to beat his head against the wall.

  Eliza pursed her lips for a moment.

  "Well," she said, at length. "I'll send you for a year. Then we'll see."