Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (50 page)

"Leave him alone!" she whispered to no
one.  "Leave him alone!"
 
 

A light wind of April fanned over the hill. 
There was a smell of burning leaves and rubble around the school. 
In the field on the hill flank behind the house a plowman drove his
big horse with loose clanking traces around a lessening square of dry
fallow earth.  Gee, woa.  His strong feet followed after. 
The big share bit cleanly down, cleaving a deep spermy furrow of
moist young earth along its track.

John Dorsey Leonard stared fascinated out the window
at the annual rejuvenation of the earth.  Before his eyes the
emergent nymph was scaling her hard cracked hag's pelt.  The
golden age returned.

Down the road a straggling queue of boys were all
gone into the world of light.  Wet with honest sweat, the
plowman paused at the turn, and wiped the blue shirting of his
forearm across his beaded forehead.  Meanwhile, his intelligent
animal, taking advantage of the interval, lifted with slow majesty a
proud flowing tail, and added his mite to the fertility of the soil
with three moist oaty droppings.  Watching, John Dorsey grunted
approvingly.  They also serve who only stand and wait.

"Please, Mr. Leonard," said Eugene,
carefully choosing his moment, "can I go?"

John Dorsey Leonard stroked his chin absently, and
stared sightlessly at his book.  Others abide our question, thou
art free.

"Huh?" he purred vaguely.  Then, with
a high vacant snigger he turned suddenly, and said:

"You rascal, you!  See if Mrs. Leonard
wants you."  He fastened his brutal grip with keen hunger
into the boy's thin arm.  April is the cruellest of months. 
Eugene winced, moved away, and then stood quietly, checked by memory
of the old revolt from awe.

He found Margaret in the library reading to the
children from The Water Babies.

"Mr. Leonard says to ask you if I can go?"
he said.

And her eyes were darkened wholly.

"Yes, you scamp.  Go on," she said. 
"Tell me, boy," she coaxed, softly, "can't you be a
little bit better?"

"Yes'm," he promised, easily.  "I'll
try."  Say not the struggle naught availeth.

She smiled at his high mettled prancing nervousness.

"In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin',"
she said gently.  "Get out of here."

He bounded away from the nunnery of the chaste breast
and quiet mind.

As he leaped down the stairs into the yard he heard
Dirk Barnard's lusty splashing bathtub solo.  Sweet Thames, run
softly till I end my song.  Tyson Leonard, having raked into
every slut's corner of nature with a thin satisfied grin, emerged
from the barn with a cap full of fresh eggs.  A stammering
cackle of protest followed him from angry hens who found too late
that men betray.  At the barnside, under the carriage shed,
"Pap" Rheinhart tightened the bellyband of his saddled
brown mare, swinging strongly into the saddle, and with a hard
scramble of hoofs, came up the hill, wheeled in behind the house, and
drew up by Eugene.

"Jump on, 'Gene," he invited, patting the
mare's broad rump.  "I'll take you home."

Eugene looked up at him grinning.

"You'll take me nowhere," he said.  "I
couldn't sit down for a week last time."

"Pap" boomed with laughter.

"Why, pshaw, boy!" he said.  "That
was nothing but a gentle little dog-trot."

"Dog-trot your granny," said Eugene. 
"You tried to kill me."

"Pap" Rheinhart turned his wry neck down on
the boy with grave dry humor.

"Come on," he said gruffly.  "I'm
not going to hurt you.  I'll teach you how to ride a horse."

"Much obliged, Pap," said Eugene
ironically.  "But I'm thinking of using my tail a good deal
in my old age.  I don't want to wear it out while I'm young."

Pleased with them both, "Pap" Rheinhart
laughed loud and deep, spat a brown quid back over the horse's
crupper, and, digging his heels in smartly, galloped away around the
house, into the road.  The horse bent furiously to his work,
like a bounding dog.  With four-hooved thunder he drummed upon
the sounding earth.  Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula
campum.

At the two-posted entry, by the bishop's boundary,
the departing students turned, split quickly to the sides, and urged
the horseman on with shrill cries.  "Pap" bent low,
with loose-reined hands above the horse-mane, went through the gate
like the whiz of a cross-bow.  Then, he jerked the mare back on
her haunches with a dusty skid of hoofs, and waited for the boys to
come up.

"Hey!"  With high bounding exultancy
Eugene came down the road to join them.  Without turning, stolid
Van Yeats threw up his hand impatiently and greeted the unseen with a
cheer.  The others turned, welcoming him with ironical
congratulation.

"'Highpockets,'" said "Doc"
Hines, comically puckering his small tough face, "how'd you
happen to git out on time?"  He had an affected,
high-pitched nigger drawl.  When he spoke he kept one hand in
his coat pocket, fingering a leather thong loaded with buckshot.

"J. D. had to do his spring plowing," said
Eugene.

"Well, if it ain't ole Handsome," said
Julius Arthur.  He grinned squintily, revealing a mouthful of
stained teeth screwed in a wire clamp.  His face was covered
with small yellow pustulate sores. How begot, how nourished?

"Shall we sing our little song for Handsome
Hal?" said Ralph Rolls to his copesmate Julius.  He wore a
derby hat jammed over his pert freckled face.  As he spoke he
took a ragged twist of tobacco from his pocket and bit off a large
chew with a rough air of relish.

"Want a chew, Jule?" he said.

Julius took the twist, wiped off his mouth with a
loose male grin, and crammed a large quid into his cheek.

He brought me roots of relish sweet.

"Want one, Highpockets?" he asked Eugene,
grinning.

I hate him that would upon the rack of this tough
world stretch me out longer.

"Hell," said Ralph Rolls.  "Handsome
would curl up and die if he ever took a chew."

In Spring like torpid snakes my enemies awaken.

At the corner of Church Street, across from the new
imitation Tudor of the Episcopal church, they paused.  Above
them, on the hill, rose the steeples of the Methodist and
Presbyterian churches.  Ye antique spires, ye distant towers!

"Who's going my way?" said Julius Arthur. 
"Come on, 'Gene.  The car's down here.  I'll take you
home."

"Thanks, but I can't," said Eugene. 
"I'm going up-town."  Their curious eyes on Dixieland
when I get out.

"You going home, Villa?"

"No," said George Graves.

"Well, keep Hal out of trouble," said Ralph
Rolls.

Julius Arthur laughed roughly and thrust his hand
through Eugene's hair.  "Old Hairbreadth Hal," he
said.  "The cutthroat from Saw-Tooth Gap!"

"Don't let 'em climb your frame, son," said
Van Yeats, turning his quiet pleasant face on Eugene.  "If
you need help, let me know."

"So long, boys."

"So long."

They crossed the street, mixing in nimble horse-play,
and turned down past the church along a sloping street that led to
the garages.  George Graves and Eugene continued up the hill.

"Julius is a good boy," said George
Graves.  "His father makes more money than any other lawyer
in town."

"Yes," said Eugene, still brooding on
Dixieland and his clumsy deceptions.

A street-sweeper walked along slowly uphill, beside
his deep wedge-bodied cart.  From time to time he stopped the
big slow-footed horse and, sweeping the littered droppings of street
and gutter into a pan, with a long-handled brush, dumped his
collections into the cart.  Let not Ambition mock their useful
toil.

Three sparrows hopped deftly about three fresh
smoking globes of horse-dung, pecking out tidbits with dainty
gourmandism.  Driven away by the approaching cart, they skimmed
briskly over to the bank, with bright twitters of annoyance. 
One too like thee, tameless, and swift, and proud.

George Graves ascended the hill with a slow ponderous
rhythm, staring darkly at the ground.

"Say, 'Gene!" he said finally.  "I
don't believe he makes that much."

Eugene thought seriously for a moment.  With
George Graves, it was necessary to resume a discussion where it had
been left off three days before.

"Who?" he said, "John Dorsey? 
Yes, I think he does," he added, grinning.

"Not over $2,500, anyway," said George
Graves gloomily.

"No--three thousand, three thousand!" he
said, in a choking voice.

George Graves turned to him with a sombre, puzzled
smile.  "What's the matter?" he asked.

"O you fool!  You damn fool!" gasped
Eugene.  "You've been thinking about it all this time."

George Graves laughed sheepishly, with embarrassment,
richly.

From the top of the hill at the left, the swelling
unction of the Methodist organ welled up remotely from the choir,
accompanied by a fruity contralto voice, much in demand at funerals. 
Abide with me.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!

George Graves turned and examined the four large
black houses, ascending on flat terraces to the church, of Paston
Place.

"That's a good piece of property, 'Gene,"
he said.  "It belongs to the Paston estate."

Fast falls the even-tide.  Heaves the proud
harlot her distended breast, in intricacies of laborious song.

"It will all go to Gil Paston some day,"
said George Graves with virtuous regret.  "He's not worth a
damn."

They had reached the top of the hill.  Church
Street ended levelly a block beyond, in the narrow gulch of the
avenue.  They saw, with quickened pulse, the little pullulation
of the town.

A negro dug tenderly in the round loamy flowerbeds of
the Presbyterian churchyard, bending now and then to thrust his thick
fingers gently in about the roots.  The old church, with its
sharp steeple, rotted slowly, decently, prosperously, like a good
man's life, down into its wet lichened brick.  Eugene looked
gratefully, with a second's pride, at its dark decorum, its solid
Scotch breeding.

"I'm a Presbyterian," he said.  "What
are you?"

"An Episcopalian, when I go," said George
Graves with irreverent laughter.

"To hell with these Methodists!" Eugene
said with an elegant, disdainful face.  "They're too damn
common for us."  God in three persons--blessed Trinity. 
"Brother Graves," he continued, in a fat well-oiled voice,
"I didn't see you at prayer-meeting Wednesday night.  Where
in Jesus' name were you?"

With his open palm he struck George Graves violently
between his meaty shoulders.  George Graves staggered drunkenly
with high resounding laughter.

"Why, Brother Gant," said he, "I had a
little appointment with one of the Good Sisters, out in the
cow-shed."

Eugene gathered a telephone pole into his wild
embrace, and threw one leg erotically over its second foot-wedge. 
George Graves leaned his heavy shoulder against it, his great limbs
drained with laughter.

There was a hot blast of steamy air from the
Appalachian Laundry across the street and, as the door from the
office of the washroom opened, they had a moment's glimpse of
negresses plunging their wet arms into the liquefaction of their
clothes.

George Graves dried his eyes.  Laughing wearily,
they crossed over.

"We oughtn't to talk like that, 'Gene,"
said George Graves reproachfully.  "Sure enough!  It's
not right."

He became moodily serious rapidly.  "The
best people in this town are church members," he said
earnestly.  "It's a fine thing."

"Why?" said Eugene, with an idle curiosity.

"Because," said George Graves, "you
get to know all the people who are worth a damn."

Worth being damned, he thought quickly.  A
quaint idea.

"It helps you in a business way.  They come
to know you and respect you.  You won't get far in this town,
'Gene, without them.  It pays," he added devoutly, "to
be a Christian."

"Yes," Eugene agreed seriously, "you're
right."  To walk together to the kirk, with a goodly
company.

He thought sadly of his lost sobriety, and of how
once, lonely, he had walked the decent lanes of God's Scotch town. 
Unbidden they came again to haunt his memory, the shaven faces of
good tradesmen, each leading the well washed kingdom of his home in
its obedient ritual the lean hushed smiles of worship, the chained
passion of devotion, as they implored God's love upon their ventures,
or delivered their virgin daughters into the holy barter of marriage.
And from even deeper adyts of his brain there swam up slowly to the
shores of his old hunger the great fish whose names he scarcely
knew--whose names, garnered with blind toil from a thousand books,
from Augustine, himself a name, to Jeremy Taylor, the English
metaphysician, were brief evocations of scalded light, electric,
phosphorescent, illuminating by their magic connotations the vast far
depths of ritual and religion:  They came?Bartholomew, Hilarius,
Chrysostomos, Polycarp, Anthony, Jerome, and the forty martyrs of
Cappadocia who walked the waves--coiled like their own green shadows
for a moment, and were gone.