Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (42 page)

But he remained at Dixieland as long as there was any
one to listen to him, and to the bleak little group of winter
boarders he brought magic.  They fed hungrily on all the
dramatic gusto with which, lunging back and forth in the big rocker,
before the blazing parlor fire, he told and retold the legends of his
experience, taking, before their charmed eyes, an incident that had
touched him romantically, and embellishing, weaving and building it
up.  A whole mythology grew up as, goggle-eyed, they listened:

General Fitzhugh Lee, who had reined up before the
farmer boy and asked for a drink of water, now tossed off an oaken
bucketful, questioned him closely concerning the best roads into
Gettysburg, asked if he had seen detachments of the enemy, wrote his
name down in a small book, and went off saying to his staff: 
"That boy will make his mark.  It is impossible to defeat
an enemy which breeds boys like that."

The Indians, whom he had passed amicably as he rode
out into the New Mexican desert on a burro, seeking the ancient fort,
now spurred after him with fell intent and wild scalping whoops. 
He rode furiously through muttering redskin villages, and found the
protection of two cattlemen in the nick of time.  The thief who
had entered his room at dead of night in New Orleans, and picked up
his clothes, and whom he had fought desperately upon the floor, he
now pursued naked for seventeen blocks (not five) down Canal Street.
 
 

He went several times a week to the moving-picture
shows, taking Eugene, and sitting, bent forward in hunched
absorption, through two full performances.  They came out at
ten-thirty or eleven o'clock, on cold ringing pavements, into a world
frozen bare?a dead city of closed shops, dressed windows, milliners'
and clothiers' models posturing with waxen gaiety at congealed
silence.

On the Square the slackened fountain dropped a fat
spire of freezing water into its thickening rim of ice.  In
summer, a tall spire blown in blue sheets of spray.  When they
turned it down it wilted--that was like a fountain, too.  No
wind blew.

His eyes fixed on the clean concrete walk, Gant
strode on, muttering dramatically, composing a narrative of the
picture.  The cold steel of new sewing-machines glinted in dim
light.  The Singer building.  Tallest in the world. 
The stitching hum of Eliza's machine.  Needle through your
finger before you know it.  He winced.  They passed the
Sluder Building at the corner of the Square and turned left. 
Gets over $700 a month in office-rent from this alone.  The
window on the corner was filled with rubber syringes and thermos
bottles.  Drink Coca Cola.  They say he stole the formula
from old mountain woman.  $50,000,000 now.  Rats in the
vats.  Dope at Wood's better.  Too weak here.  He had
recently acquired a taste for the beverage and drank four or five
glasses a day.

D. Stern had his old shack on that corner twenty
years before Fagg bought it.  Belonged to Paston estate. 
Could have bought it for a song.  Rich man now.  D. moved
to North Main now.  The Jew's rich. Fortune out of winnies. 
They're hot, they're hot.  In a broken pot.  If I had a
little time I'd make a little rhyme.  Thirteen kids--she had one
every year.  As broad as she's long.  They all get fat. 
Every one works.  Sons pay father board.  None of mine, I
can assure you.  The Jews get there.

The hunchback--what did they call him?  One of
Nature's Cruel Jests.  Ah, Lord!  What's become of old John
Bunny?  I used to like his pictures.  Oh yes.  Dead.

That pure look they have, at the end, when he kisses
her, mused Eugene.  Later--A Warmer Clime.  Her long lashes
curled down over her wet eyes, she was unable to meet his gaze. 
The sweet lips trembled with desire as, clasping her in a grip of
steel, he bent down over her yielding body and planted hungry kisses
on her mouth.  When the purple canopy of dawn had been reft
asunder by the rays of the invading sun.  The Stranger.  It
wouldn't do to say the next morning.  They have a thick coat of
yellow paint all over their face.  Meanwhile, in Old England. 
I wonder what they say to each other.  They're a pretty tough
lot, I suppose.

A swift thrust of conviction left him unperturbed. 
The other was better.

He thought of the Stranger.  Steel-gray eyes. 
A steady face.  An eighth of a second faster on the draw than
any one else.  Two-gun Bill Hart.  Anderson of the
Essanay.  Strong quiet men.

He clapped his hand against his buttock with a sharp
smack and shot the murderous forefinger at an ashcan, a lamp-post,
and a barber-pole, with a snapping wrist.  Gant, startled in
composition, gave him a quick uneasy look.  They walked on.

Came a day when Spring put forth her blossoms on the
earth again. No, no--not that.  Then all grew dark. 
Picture of a lily trampled on the earth.  That means he bigged
her.  Art.  Filled her with thee a baby fair.  You
can't go away now.  Why?  Because--because--her eyes
dropped shyly, a slow flush mantled her cheek.  He stared at her
blankly for a moment, then his puzzled gaze--(O good!)--fell to the
tiny object she was fingering nervously, with dawning comprehension. 
Blushing rosily, she tried to conceal the little jacket behind her. 
Grace!  A great light broke on him!  Do you mean it? 
She went to him with a cry, half laugh, half sob, and buried her
burning face in his neck.  You silly boy.  Of course I mean
it (you bastard!).  The little dance girl.  Smiling with
wet lechery and manipulating his moist rope of cigar, Faro Jim
shuffled a pack of cards slowly and fixed on her his vulturesque
eye.  A knife in his shiny boots, a small derringer and three
aces up his ruffled sleeve, and suave murder in his heart.  But
the cold gray eyes of the Stranger missed nothing. 
Imperturbably he drank his Scotch, wheeled from the mirror with
barking Colt just one-sixth of a second before the gambler could
fire.  Faro coughed and slid forward slowly upon the floor.

There was no sound now in the crowded room of the
Triple Y.  Men stood petrified.  The face of Bad Bill and
the two Mexicans had turned a dirty gray.  Finally, the sheriff
spoke, turning with awe from the still figure on the sawdust floor.

"By God, stranger!" he ejaculated, "I
never knew the man lived who could beat Faro to the draw. 
What's yore name?"

"In the fam'ly Bible back home, pardner,"
the Stranger drawled, "it's Eugene Gant, but folks out here
generally calls me The Dixie Ghost."

There was a slow gasp of wonder from the crowd.

"Gawd!" some one whispered.  "It's
the Ghost!"

As the Ghost turned coolly back to finish his
interrupted drink, he found himself face to face with the little
dancing girl.  Twosmoking globes of brine welled from the
pellucid depths of her pure eyes and fell with a hot splash on his
bronzed hand.

"How can I ever thank you!" she cried. 
"You have saved me from a fate far worse than death."

But the Ghost, who had faced death many times without
a flicker of a lash, was unable to face something he saw now in a
pair of bigbrown eyes.  He took off his sombrero and twisted it
shyly in his big hands.

"Why, that's all right, ma'am," he gulped
awkwardly.  "Glad to be of service to a lady any time."

By this time the two bartenders had thrown a
table-cloth over Faro Bill, carried the limp body into the back room,
and returned to their positions behind the bar.  The crowd
clustered about in little groups, laughing and talking excitedly, and
in a moment, as the pianist began to hammer out a tune on the
battered piano, broke into the measures of a waltz.

In the wild West of those days, passions were
primitive, vengeance sudden, and retribution immediate.

Two dimples sentinelled a platoon of milk-white
teeth.

"Won't you dance with me, Mr. Ghost?" she
coaxed.

Thoughtfully he pondered on love's mystery. 
Pure but passionate. Appearances against her, 'tis true.  The
foul breath of slander. She worked in a bawdy-house but her heart was
clean.  Outside of that, what can one say against her?  He
thought pleasantly of murder.  With child's eyes he regarded his
extinct enemies.  Men died violently but cleanly, in the
movies.  Bang-bang.  Good-by, boys, I'm through. 
Through the head or heart--a clean hole, no blood.  He had kept
innocency.  Do their guts or their brains come spilling out? 
Currant jelly where a face was, the chin shot off. Or down there that
other--His arm beat the air like a wing: he writhed.  If you
lose that?  Done, die.  He clutched his throat in his
anguish.

They bent down eastward along Academy Street, having
turned right from the little caudal appendage that gave on the
northeastern corner of the Square.  The boy's mind flamed with
bright streaming images, sharp as gems, mutable as chameleons. 
His life was the shadow of a shadow, a play within a play.  He
became the hero-actor-star, the lord of the cinema, and the lover of
a beautiful movie-queen, as heroic as his postures, with a superior
actuality for every make-believe.  He was the Ghost and he who
played the Ghost, the cause that minted legend into fact.

He was those heroes whom he admired, and the victor,
in beauty, nobility, and sterling worth, over those whom he despised
because they always triumphed and were forever good and pretty and
beloved of women.  He was chosen and beloved of a bevy of
internationally renowned beauties, vampires and pure sweet girls
alike, with fruity blondes in the lead, all contesting for his
favors, and some of the least scrupulous resorting to underhand
practices in order to win him.  Their pure eyes turned up to him
in everlasting close-ups: he feasted virtuously upon their proffered
lips and, conflict over, murder sanctified, and virtue crowned,
walked away with his siren into the convenient blaze of a constantly
setting sun.

With burning sidelong face he looked quickly up at
Gant, twisting his convulsive neck.
 
 

Across the street, a calcium glare from the corner
light bathed coldly the new brick facade of the Orpheum Theatre. 
All This Week Gus Nolan and His Georgia Peaches.  Also the
Piedmont Comedy Four and Miss Bobbie Dukane.

The theatre was dark, the second show was over. 
They stared curiously across the street at the posters.  In this
cold silence where were the Peaches?  At the Athens now, upon
the Square.  They always went there after.  Gant looked at
his watch.  11:12.  Big Bill Messier outside swinging his
club and watching them.  On the counter stools a dozen bucks and
ogling rakehells.  I've got a car outside.  Dalliance under
difficulties.  Later, the Genevieve on Liberty Street. 
They all stay there.  Whisperings.  Footfalls. Raided.

Girls from good families, some of them, I suppose,
Gant thought.

Opposite the Baptist Church a hearse was drawn up
before Gorham's Undertaking Parlors.  A light burned dimly
through the ferns.  Who can that be? he wondered.  Miss
Annie Patton critically ill.  She's past eighty.  Some
lunger from New York.  A little Jew with a peaked face. 
Some one all the time.  Await alike th' inevitable hour. 
Ah, Lord!

With loss of hunger, he thought of undertaking and
undertakers, and in particular of Mr. Gorham.  He was a man with
blond hair and white eyebrows.

Waited to marry her when that rich young Cuban died,
so they could take honeymoon to Havana.

They turned down Spring Street by the Baptist
Church.  This is really like a city of the dead, Eugene
thought.  The town, rimmed with frost, lay frozen below the
stars in a cataleptic trance.  The animacy of life hung in
abeyance.  Nothing grew old, nothing decayed, nothing died. 
It was triumph over time.  If a great demon snapped his fingers
and stopped all life in the world for an instant that should be a
hundred years, who would know the difference?  Every man a
Sleeping Beauty.  If you're waking call me early, call me early,
mother dear.

He tried to see life and movement behind the walls,
and failed.  He and Gant were all that lived.  For a house
betrays nothing: there may be murder behind its very quiet face. 
He thought that Troy should be like this--perfect, undecayed as the
day when Hector died.  Only they burned it.  To find old
cities as they were, unruined--the picture charmed him.  The
Lost Atlantis.  Ville d'Ys. The old lost towns, seasunken. 
Great vacant ways, unrusted, echoed under his lonely feet; he haunted
vast arcades, he pierced the atrium, his shoes rang on the temple
flags.

Or to be, he lusciously meditated, left alone with a
group of pretty women in a town whence all the other people had fled
from some terror of plague, earthquake, volcano, or other menace to
which he, quite happily, was immune.  Lolling his tongue 
delicately, he saw himself loafing sybaritically through first-class
confectioners' and grocers' shops, gorging like an anaconda on
imported dainties: exquisite small fish from Russia, France, and
Sardinia; coal-black hams from England; ripe olives, brandied
peaches, and liqueur chocolates.  He would loot old cellars for
fat Burgundies, crack the gold necks of earth-chilled bottles of Pol
Roger against the wall, and slake his noonday thirst at the spouting
bung of a great butt of Mé dunkels.  When his linen was soiled
he would outfit himself anew with silk underwear and the finest
shirtings; he would have a new hat every day in the week and new
suits whenever he pleased.