Heed the Thunder (2 page)

L
incoln Fargo had been between twelve and seventeen when he entered the Union Army. An orphan in a period of indifferent vital statistics, he did not know how old he was—nor does it matter. As he was fond of saying, in paraphrase of a statement of the man for whom he had been named, he was old enough.

He had joined the army primarily because he was paid to (he had received two hundred dollars to substitute for a wealthy farmer’s son); secondarily, because it was the patriotic, the right thing to do. Or perhaps the two factors moved him equally. He was as proud of his reputation as any man, and he was no more mercenary than he had to be. But, being a bound boy, with no future except that which he could carve for himself, he might have had to be a little more so than others.

He had stayed in the army because he did not know how to get out. And while he had made the best of things, emerging a full sergeant, he had held a very low opinion of wars ever since. He believed, privately, that he had been cheated.

In considerable travel and much incisive if narrow thinking, he had come to the conclusion that a man got no more freedom than he worked for. Sometimes he didn’t get that much unless he was lucky; but certainly it was useless to try to give it to him. The muscles you got getting freedom were needed to hold on to it. If you didn’t have ’em, you wouldn’t keep it long. Then, there was another way of looking at it. Suppose your neighbor had a dog penned up under his house, and you tried to make him turn it loose. You got to fighting and you both got killed and wrecked the house to boot. The dog was free, but was it worth it? And wasn’t it likely that he would have dug out or that the neighbor would have relented, anyway, in time?

So reasoning, in his admitted ignorance, Lincoln Fargo believed that the simple truths he had been so long in learning must have been known at the time to the powers behind the war. He believed, therefore, that there must have been some other and venal reason for it.

Second guesses were costly in Lincoln Fargo’s day. He had been stung once; that was
their
fault. Stung again, it would be his.

He had no use for wars.

Lincoln Fargo often wondered why, when he was discharged, he had returned to Ohio. There was no one there he particularly cared about. There were many more opportunities elsewhere than in the little community where he had been legally a slave. But he did go back; that much is history. The wildcat bank notes which he had received for his enlistment had become worthless; he had gambled away his army pay. He went to work as a mason’s apprentice at six dollars a month, found, and one suit of clothes each year.

On a farm where he was laying a foundation for a silo, he became acquainted with the hired girl, an orphan like himself. Everything about her amused him: her coltish handsomeness, her piety, her solemn industriousness and prudishness. And leading her on with the tether of his sardonic humor, he lost sight of what was happening at his end of the rope. He took her to a revival. To his thoroughgoing mortification, he found himself among the mourners, converted. He married her.

He had no use for the ministry.

Without apologies or compunction, he took her savings and entered business for himself. He worked hard. Wherever there was stonework in that section of Ohio, Link Fargo did it, at one price or another. He wanted work. And after five years, he was no further ahead than he had been in the beginning. Moreover, he was ruptured.

On the winnings of a poker game, he left his family and went to Saint Louis. He never admitted later, even to himself, that he did not intend to come back. In Saint Louis he registered at the best hotel, lived lavishly, and soon established a reputation for himself as a first-rate storyteller, gambler, and judge of good whisky and food. Inherently well-mannered, he was still shockingly plain-spoken. He moved in an aura of savagely rollicking good humor. He didn’t give a damn. He did mention casually that he was a stonework contractor, then avoided the subject thereafter. He did not want to talk about it, he declared. He was there for a good time.…No, no business, dammit, said Link; and this round’s on me.

Perhaps he did know what he was doing. He liked to say that he did.

There came an evening (he was down to his last twenty dollars at the time) when two of his companions suggested dinner in one of the private dining rooms upstairs. There were some parties there it would pay him to meet. Yes, they knew he didn’t want to talk business. They knew he had
his
made. But just the same…

A few days later, Link returned to Ohio. A man of his word, he scrupulously kicked back a full third of the money he received for constructing an unremembered number of railway trestles, water-tower and depot foundations, and the like. But, at that, he cleared over ten thousand dollars in two years.

In the sixties and seventies, many of the streams of the Middle West were navigable far into the north, almost to Canada. Townsites were springing up along the river banks. Choice lots were selling at prices comparable to those in the big cities of the East. There were persistent rumors that the capital of the United States would be moved to some much more appropriate spot in the wilderness of Nebraska Territory. There, along the rivers, cities that would rival New York and Chicago and Boston would be built. Let the railroads run their right-of-ways where they liked. River travel was cheaper, more comfortable and popular—better in every way.

Lincoln Fargo moved to Kansas City. His wife was able to persuade sufficient money from him to start a boarding house there. With the remainder, and a sheaf of high-interest notes, he bought a boat. He made one trip from Kansas City to Fairbury, the profits from which were applied on his notes. On the second trip he struck a sandbar.

The boat is still there, someplace in Nebraska, buried countless feet beneath the wiregrass sod of what was once a streambed. On it are the belongings, including one grand piano, and the hopes of several score would-be settlers. Link believed—he was pretty sure—that the passengers all got off safely. But he often regretted that the indignation of his human cargo had prevented him from taking a careful census.

On his way back to Kansas City, he was forced to do what he considered the one shameful thing of his career. He stole a horse. He could never forgive himself for it. He believed that many of the misfortunes which he suffered later were punishment for the crime.

He could not seem to get started in anything in Kansas City, although, as even Mrs. Fargo admitted, he tried hard. One of his ventures was with a sharper, a glittering self-titled professor who was a guest of the boarding house. They marketed by mail a guaranteed eradicator for all sorts of vermin. It consisted of a small brick and a mallet and a simple set of instructions. The instructions advised the purchaser to lay the pest upon the brick and strike it firmly with the mallet.

The device, if it could be called that, sold well at the beginning, and the two promoters ignored with impunity the several warnings they received from far-off Washington. Few of the buyers complained, knowing that it would do no good. In fact, after their first chagrin, many of them became competitors. The periodicals and mails became flooded with advertisements for the Bug Killer. Everyone knew of the scheme within a few weeks. No one would buy any more.

Link was not physically able to go back to the heavy mason’s trade, and he had lost his taste for it, anyway. He dealt cards for a series of gambling houses, but his services were unsatisfactory. He could take no interest in gambling for others; and he lacked the money to gamble well for himself.

Anyone with one month’s rent for a building could start a saloon. The fiercely competing breweries would supply everything else on credit. So Link opened a saloon, in a block with only twelve others, and presided at its deathbed over a period of several months. He might have been one of the survivors in the liquor war, but he did not like the business. He would have no part of those extremely profitable sidelines associated with upstairs rooms, knockout drops, and trapdoors to the river. Worst of all, he could not stomach drunkenness. A few drinks, he believed, were all right. He, himself, could take a great many more than a few and still remain in control of his senses; and that was all right, too. But a man who couldn’t drink or who drank too much disgusted and angered him, and it made no difference to him how much he spent.

He had no use for drunks. He did not conceal the fact. He was ruptured but he was still very handy with his fists and feet.

He tried a few other things after his failure as a saloonkeeper. The few things there were left for him to try. He operated a dray. He took a working interest in a livery stable. All failed. In the late ’seventies he returned to Nebraska and took out a homestead—two homesteads, in fact. To get the second one, he followed the not uncommon practice of hiring a woman for the day, registering her as his wife, and taking out a second claim in her name. It was not legal, of course, but he was an “old soldier of the Union,” and allowances had to be made.

The Grand Army men of the section were not long in banding together. Copperheads—Southern sympathizers—were greatly in the minority. With only a twinge of conscience, Lincoln became a night rider. He and his friends paid nocturnal visits to those copperheads who possessed good proved-up claims, and gave them the choice of selling out at an exceedingly modest figure or being run out. Few had to be run out, and Link told himself that he felt no compunction. After all, what kick had they, since night-riding was the South’s own invention? He was quite sure that they would have treated him in the same fashion if the opportunity had offered.

In time Lincoln Fargo owned a thousand acres of the richest Nebraska bottom land. In 1918 those acres would be worth three hundred thousand dollars. But he did not own them then. He did not own them now. He had been on the wrong side of the fence in the Verdon townsite boom.

Now, he had his pension. He had his home and ten acres on the outskirts of Verdon. He had turned over one hundred and sixty acres to his oldest son, Sherman.

Actually, he did not even own his home. He had deeded it over to his wife, upon the advice of a lawyer, to escape payment on the ancient river-boat notes.

Lincoln had no use for lawyers.

He was sixty or sixty-five now—he didn’t know which. He knew he was old enough.

He sat on the front porch of his rambling cottage, his Congress gaiters propped against a pillar, his big black hat pulled down upon his graying horseshoe of hair, his bright blue eyes buried in scalene triangles of flesh.

His seven acres of corn wouldn’t be worth harvesting this year. Which meant that he would have to buy if he was going to feed. But why feed, anyway? A damned nuisance and no money in it.

Those chickens were a damned nuisance, too. (He swiped at one viciously with his cane.) Always messing up the porch or getting into the garden; too tough to eat and too lazy to lay. But, what the hell? Let the old lady clean the porch; it would take some of the meanness out of her. Let the garden go to hell. It was cheaper to buy canned sass.

Anyhow, he didn’t care much for eating. You couldn’t gum food and get any fun out of it.

He had no use for dentists, either.

Thinking, dreaming, he rolled his long black stogie from one corner of his mouth to another, absent-mindedly cursing the proximity of his nose to the cigar.…Another year or two, by God, he thought, an’ I’ll have to cut a hole in my britches and puff through my arse.…And he laughed scornfully, his accipitrine façade trembling with amusement at the tricks time had played on him.

It was strange, shocking, the number of things he no longer cared about, could no longer trust. He had seen and had all that was within his power to see and have. He knew the total, the absolute lines of his periphery. Nothing could be added. There was now only the process of taking away. He wondered if it was like that with everyone, and he decided that it must be. And he wondered how they felt, and reasoned that they must feel about as he. That was all there was to life: a gift that was slowly taken away from you. An Indian gift. You started out with a handful of something and ended up with a handful of nothing. The best things were taken away from you last when you needed them worst. When you were at the bottom of the pot, when there was no longer reason for life, then you died. It was probably a good thing.

He had no use for life. Very little, at any rate.

He was pretty well stripped, but it had been a good long game and the amusement was worth something. It wasn’t so much the loss as the losing he minded. If there were some way of calling the thing a draw, he would have pulled back his chair willingly enough.

He supposed he was living on pride. Will power.

He wondered how long it would be before he had no use for that.

He decided that it would not be very long.

The screen door had opened and his son, Grant, had come out.

“Good afternoon, Pa,” he said.

“I guess it is afternoon, ain’t it?” said Link.

He glanced at his son, coughed, removed his feet from the post, and cleared his throat on a passing chicken. Then he leaned back again, looking at Grant slyly from the corner of his eyes.

The young man took out a package of cigarettes, removed one, and stood tapping it on his wrist. He was aware of his father’s dislike, and it made him uncomfortable. Being Lincoln’s son, he wanted very much to be liked. Unfortunately, he also liked himself very well as he was.

Grant was the youngest of Lincoln’s four children. Tall and thin, he bore some slight resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe in actuality and a great deal in his own imagination. He wore a pearl-gray derby hat, a box-coated suit with peg legs, and yellow shoes with metal and glass buttons. Attached to his lapel by a black celluloid rosette and a length of black ribbon were pince-nez with window glass lenses. His gates-ajar collar was equipped with a flowing black tie. Under his arm he carried a copy of the Rubáiyát.

“It looks like it might rain,” he remarked.