Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (38 page)

"Get out of here," she said.  "You
don't know what you're talking about.  It's that accursed licker
that makes you so mean."  She began to weep, brushing at
her broad red nose with her hand.

"I never thought I'd live to hear such talk from
a son of mine," she said.  She held out her forefinger with
the old powerful gesture.

"Now, I want to tell you," she said, "I'm
not going to put up with you any longer.  If you don't get out
of here at once I'm going to call 38 and let them take you." 
This was the police station.  It awoke unpleasant memories. 
He had spent the day in jail on two similar occasions.  He
became more violent than before, screamed a vile name at her, and
made a motion to strike her.  At this moment, Luke entered; he
was on his way to Gant's.

The antagonism between the boy and his older brother
was deep and deadly.  It had lasted for years.  Now,
trembling with anger, Luke came to his mother's defense.

"You m-m-m-miserable d-d-degenerate," he
stuttered, unconsciously falling into the swing of the Gantian
rhetoric.  "You ought to b-b-b-be horsewhipped."

He was a well grown and muscular young fellow of
nineteen years, but too sensitive to all the taboos of brotherhood to
be prepared for the attack Steve made on him.  Steve drove at
him viciously, smashing drunkenly at his face with both hands. 
He was driven gasping and blinded across the kitchen.

Wrong forever on the throne.

Somewhere, through fear and fury, Eugene heard Ben's
voice humming unconcernedly, and the slow picked tune on the piano.

"Ben!" he screamed, dancing about and
grasping a hammer.

Ben entered like a cat.  Luke was bleeding
warmly from the nose.

"Come on, come on, you big bastard," said
Steve, exalted by his success, throwing himself into a fancy boxing
posture.  "I'll take you on now.  You haven't got a
chance, Ben," he continued, with elaborate pity.  "You
haven't got a chance, boy.  I'll tear your head off with what I
know."

Ben scowled quietly at him for a moment while he
pranced softly about, proposing his fists in Police Gazette
attitudes.  Then, exploding suddenly in maniacal anger, the
quiet one sprang upon the amateur pugilist with one bound, and
flattened him with a single blow of his fist.  Steve's head
bounced upon the floor in a most comforting fashion.  Eugene
gave a loud shriek of ecstasy and danced about, insane with joy,
while Ben, making little snarling noises in his throat, leaped on his
brother's prostrate body and thumped his bruised skull upon the
boards.  There was a beautiful thoroughness about his wakened
anger--it never made inquiries till later.

"Good old Ben," screamed Eugene, howling
with insane laughter. "Good old Ben."

Eliza, who had been calling out loudly for help, the
police, and the interference of the general public, now succeeded,
with Luke's assistance, in checking Ben's assault, and pulling him up
from his dazed victim.  She wept bitterly, her heart laden with
pain and sadness, while Luke, forgetful of his bloody nose, sorrowful
and full of shame only because brother had struck brother, assisted
Steve to his feet and brushed him off.

A terrible shame started up in each of them--they
were unable to meet one another's gaze.  Ben's thin face was
very white; he trembled violently and, catching sight of Steve's
bleared eyes for a moment, he made a retching noise in his throat,
went over to the sink, and drank a glass of cold water.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand,"
Eliza wept.

Helen came in from town with a bag of warm bread and
cakes.

"What's the matter?" she said, noting at
once all that had happened.

"I don't know," said Eliza, her face
working, shaking her head for several moments before she spoke. 
"It seems that the judgment of God is against us.  There's
been nothing but misery all my life. All I want is a little peace." 
She wept softly, wiping her weak bleared eyes with the back of her
hand.

"Well, forget about it," said Helen
quietly.  Her voice was casual, weary, sad.  "How do
you feel, Steve?" she asked.

"I wouldn't make any trouble for any one,
Helen," he said, with a maudlin whimper.  "No! 
No!" he continued in a brooding voice. "They've never given
Steve a chance.  They're all down on him. They jumped on me,
Helen.  My own brothers jumped on me, sick as I am, and beat me
up.  It's all right.  I'm going away somewhere and try to
forget.  Stevie doesn't hold any grudge against any one. He's
not built that way.  Give me your hand, buddy," he said, 
turning to Ben with nauseous sentimentality and extending his yellow
fingers, "I'm willing to shake your hand.  You hit me
to-night, but Steve's willing to forget."

"Oh my God," said Ben, grasping his
stomach.  He leaned weakly across the sink and drank another
glass of water.

"No.  No."  Steve began again. 
"Stevie isn't built--"

He would have continued indefinitely in this strain,
but Helen checked him with weary finality.

"Well, forget about it," she said, "all
of you.  Life's too short."

Life was.  At these moments, after battle, after
all the confusion, antagonism, and disorder of their lives had
exploded in a moment of strife, they gained an hour of repose in
which they saw themselves with sad tranquillity.  They were like
men who, driving forward desperately at some mirage, turn, for a
moment, to see their footprints stretching interminably away across
the waste land of the desert; or I should say, they were like those
who have been mad, and who will be mad again, but who see themselves
for a moment quietly, sanely, at morning, looking with sad untroubled
eyes into a mirror.

Their faces were sad.  There was great age in
them.  They felt suddenly the distance they had come and the
amount they had lived. They had a moment of cohesion, a moment of
tragic affection and union, which drew them together like small jets
of flame against all the senseless nihilism of life.

Margaret came in fearfully.  Her eyes were red,
her broad German face white and tearful.  A group of excited
boarders whispered in the hall.

"I'll lose them all now," Eliza fretted. 
"The last time three left.  Over twenty dollars a week and
money so hard to get.  I don't know what's to become of us
all."  She wept again.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," said Helen
impatiently.  "Forget about the boarders once in a while."

Steve sank stupidly into a chair by the long table. 
From time to time he muttered sentimentally to himself.  Luke,
his face sensitive, hurt, ashamed around his mouth, stood by him
attentively, spoke gently to him, and brought him a glass of water.

"Give him a cup of coffee, mama," Helen
cried irritably.  "For heaven's sake, you might do a little
for him."

"Why here, here," said Eliza, rushing
awkwardly to the gas range and lighting a burner.  "I never
thought--I'll have some in a minute."

Margaret sat in a chair on the other side of the
disorderly table, leaning her face in her hand and weeping.  Her
tears dredged little gulches through the thick compost of rouge and
powder with which she coated her rough skin.

"Cheer up, honey," said Helen, beginning to
laugh.  "Christmas is coming."  She patted the
broad German back comfortingly.

Ben opened the torn screen door and stepped out on
the back porch. It was a cool night in the rich month of August; the
sky was deeply pricked with great stars.  He lighted a
cigarette, holding the match with white trembling fingers. 
There were faint sounds from summer porches, the laughter of women, a
distant throb of music at a dance.  Eugene went and stood beside
him: he looked up at him with wonder, exultancy, and with sadness. 
He prodded him half with fear, half with joy.

Ben snarled softly at him, made a sudden motion to
strike him, but stopped.  A swift light flickered across his
mouth.  He smoked.
 
 

Steve went away with the German woman to Indiana,
where, at first, came news of opulence, fatness, ease, and furs (with
photographs),  later of brawls with her honest brothers, and
talk of divorce, reunion and renascence.  He gravitated between
the two poles of his support, Margaret and Eliza, returning to
Altamont every summer for a period of drugs and drunkenness that
ended in a family fight, jail, and a hospital cure.

"Hell commences," howled Gant, "as
soon as he comes home.  He's a curse and a care, the lowest of
the low, the vilest of the vile. Woman, you have given birth to a
monster who will not rest until he has done me to death, fearful,
cruel, and accursed reprobate that he is!"

But Eliza wrote her oldest son regularly, enclosed
sums of money from time to time, and revived her hopes incessantly,
against nature, against reason, against the structure of life. 
She did not dare to come openly to his defense, to reveal frankly the
place he held in her heart's core, but she would produce each letter
in which he spoke boastfully of his successes, or announced his
monthly resurrection, and read them to an unmoved family.  They
were florid, foolish letters, full of quotation marks and written in
a large fancy hand.  She was proud and pleased at all their
extravagances; his flowery illiteracy was another proof to her of his
superior intelligence.
 

Dear Mama:

Yours of the 11th to hand and must say I was glad to
know you were in "the land of the living" again as I had
begun to feel it was a  "long time between drinks"
since your last.  ("I tell you what," said Eliza,
looking up and sniggering with pleasure, "he's no fool." 
Helen, with a smile that was half ribald, half annoyed, about her big
mouth, made a face at Luke, and lifted her eyes patiently upward to
God as Eliza continued.  Gant leaned forward tensely with his
head craned upward, listening carefully with a faint grin of
pleasure.)  Well, mama, since I last wrote you things have been
coming my way and it now looks as if the "Prodigal Son"
will come home some day in his own private car.  ("Hey,
what's that?" said Gant, and she read it again for him.  He
wet his thumb and looked about with a pleased grin. 
"Wh-wh-what's the matter?" asked Luke.  "Has he
b-b-bought the railroad?"  Helen laughed hoarsely. 
"I'm from Missouri," she said.)  It took me a long
time to get started, mama, but things were breaking against me and
all that little Stevie has ever asked from any one in this "vale
of tears" is a fair chance.  (Helen laughed her ironical
husky falsetto.  "All that little S-S-Stevie has ever
asked," said Luke, reddening with annoyance, "is the whole
g-g-g-goddam world with a few gold mines thrown in.")  But
now that I'm on my feet at last, mama, I'm going to show the world
that I haven't forgotten those who stood by me in my "hour of
need," and that the best friend a man ever had is his mother. 
("Where's the shovel?" said Ben, snickering quietly.)

'That boy writes a good letter," said Gant
appreciatively.  "I'm damned if he's not the smartest one
of the lot when he wants to be."

"Yes," said Luke angrily, "he's so
smart that you'll b-b-believe any fairy tale he wants to tell you. 
B-b-b-but the one who's stuck by you through thick and thin gets no
c-c-credit at all."  He glanced meaningly at Helen. 
"It's a d-d-damn shame."

"Forget about it," she said wearily.

"Well," said Eliza thoughtfully, holding
the letter in her folded hands and gazing away, "perhaps he's
going to turn over a new leaf now.  You never know." 
Lost in pleased revery she looked into vacancy, pursing her lips.

"I hope so!" said Helen wearily. 
"You've got to show me."

Privately:  "You see how it is, don't you?"
she said to Luke, mounting to hysteria.  "Do I get any
credit?  Do I?  I can work my fingers to the bone for them,
but do I get so much as Go to Hell for my trouble?  Do I?"
 
 

In these years Helen went off into the South with
Pearl Hines, the saddlemaker's daughter.  They sang together at
moving-picture theatres in country towns.  They were booked from
a theatrical office in Atlanta.

Pearl Hines was a heavily built girl with a meaty
face and negroid lips.  She was jolly and vital.  She sang
ragtime and nigger songs with a natural passion, swinging her hips
and shaking her breasts erotically.
 

    
"Here comes my
da-dad-dy now
     
O
pop, O pop, O-o pop."
 

They earned as much as $100 a week sometimes. 
They played in towns like Waycross, Georgia; Greenville, South
Carolina; Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

They brought with them the great armor of innocency. 
They were eager and decent girls.  Occasionally the village men
made cautious explorative insults, relying on the superstition that
lives in small towns concerning "show girls."  But
generally they were well treated.

For them, these ventures into new lands were eager
with promise. The vacant idiot laughter, the ribald enthusiasm with
which South Carolina or Georgia countrymen, filling a theatre with
the strong smell of clay and sweat, greeted Pearl's songs, left them
unwounded, pleased, eager.  They were excited to know that they
were members of the profession; they bought Variety regularly, they
saw themselves finally a celebrated high-salaried team on "big
time" in great cities.  Pearl was to "put over"
the popular songs, to introduce the rag melodies with the vital
rhythm of her dynamic meatiness, Helen was to give operatic dignity
to the programme.  In a respectful hush, bathed in a pink spot,
she sang ditties of higher quality--Tosti's "Goodbye," "The
End of a Perfect Day," and "The Rosary."  She had
a big, full, somewhat metallic voice: she had received training from
her Aunt Louise, the splendid blonde who had lived in Altamont for
several years after her separation from Elmer Pentland.  Louise
gave music lessons and enjoyed her waning youth with handsome young
men.  She was one of the ripe, rich, dangerous women that Helen
liked.  She had a little girl and went away to New York with the
child when tongues grew fanged.