Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (55 page)

"Come on!" said Max Isaacs, whom he still
occasionally saw.  "We're going to have a good time, son."

"Yeah, man!" said Malvin Bowden, whose
mother was conducting the tour.  "You can still git beer in
Charleston," he added with a dissipated leer.

"You can go swimmin' in the ocean at the Isle of
Palms," said Max Isaacs.  Then, reverently, he added: 
"You can go to the Navy Yard an' see the ships."

He was waiting until he should be old enough to join
the navy.  He read the posters greedily.  He knew all the
navy men at the enlistment office.  He had read all the
booklets--he was deep in naval lore.  He knew to a dollar the
earnings of firemen, second class, of radio men, and of all kinds of
C. P. O's.

His father was a plumber.  He did not want to be
a plumber.  He wanted to join the navy and see the world. 
In the navy, a man was given good pay and a good education.  He
learned a trade.  He got good food and good clothing.  It
was all given to him free, for nothing.

"H'm!" said Eliza, with a bantering smile. 
"Why, say, boy, what do you want to do that for?  You're my
baby!"

It had been years since he was.  She smiled
tremulously.

"Yes'm," said Eugene.  "Can I
go?  It's only for five days.  I've got the money." 
He thrust his hand into his pocket, feeling.

"I tell you what!" said Eliza, working her
lips, smiling.  "You may wish you had that money before
this winter's over.  You're going to need new shoes and a warm
overcoat when the cold weather comes. You must be mighty rich. 
I wish I could afford to go running off on a trip like that."
 
"Oh, my God!" said Ben, with a
short laugh.  He tossed his cigarette into one of the first
fires of the year.

"I want to tell you, son," said Eliza,
becoming grave, "you've got to learn the value of a dollar or
you'll never have a roof to call your own.  I want you to have a
good time, boy, but you mustn't squander your money."

"Yes'm," said Eugene.

"For heaven's sake!" Ben cried.  "It's
the kid's own money.  Let him do what he likes with it.  If
he wants to throw it out the damned window, it's his own business."

She clasped her hands thoughtfully upon her waist and
stared away, pursing her lips.

"Well, I reckon it'll be all right," she
said.  "Mrs. Bowden will take care of you."

It was his first journey to a strange place alone. 
Eliza packed an old valise carefully, and stowed away a box of
sandwiches and eggs. He went away at night.  As he stood by his
valise, washed, brushed, excited, she wept a little.  He was
again, she felt, a little farther off.  The hunger for voyages
was in his face.

"Be a good boy," she said.  "Don't
get into any trouble down there."  She thought carefully a
moment, looking away.  Then she went down in her stocking, and
pulled out a five-dollar bill.

"Don't waste your money," she said. 
"Here's a little extra.  You may need it."

"Come here, you little thug!" said Ben. 
Scowling, his quick hands worked busily at the boy's stringy tie. 
He jerked down his vest, slipping a wadded ten-dollar bill into
Eugene's pocket.  "Behave yourself," he said, "or
I'll beat you to death."

Max Isaacs whistled from the street.  He went
out to join them.

There were six in Mrs. Bowden's party:  Max
Isaacs, Malvin Bowden, Eugene, two girls named Josie and Louise, and
Mrs. Bowden.  Josie was Mrs. Bowden's niece and lived with her. 
She was a tall beanpole of a girl with a prognathous mouth and
stick-out grinning teeth.  She was twenty.  The other girl,
Louise, was a waitress. She was small, plump, a warm brunette. 
Mrs. Bowden was a little sallow woman with ratty brown hair. 
She had brown worn-out eyes. She was a dressmaker.  Her husband,
a carpenter, had died in the Spring.  There was a little
insurance money.  That was how she came
to
take the trip.

Now, by night, he was riding once more into the
South.  The day-coach was hot, full of the weary smell of old
red plush.  People dozed painfully, distressed by the mournful
tolling of the bell, and the grinding halts.  A baby wailed
thinly.  Its mother, a gaunt wisp-haired mountaineer, turned the
back of the seat ahead, and bedded the child on a spread newspaper. 
Its wizened face peeked dirtily out of its swaddling discomfort of
soiled jackets and pink ribbon.  It wailed and slept.  At
the front of the car, a young hill-man, high-boned and red, clad in
corduroys and leather leggings, shelled peanuts steadily, throwing
the shells into the aisle.  People trod through them with a
sharp masty crackle.  The boys, bored, paraded restlessly to the
car-end for water.  There was a crushed litter of sanitary
drinking-cups upon the floor, and a stale odor from the toilets.

The two girls slept soundly on turned seats. 
The small one breathed warmly and sweetly through moist parted lips.

The weariness of the night wore in upon their jaded
nerves, lay upon their dry hot eyeballs.  They flattened noses
against the dirty windows, and watched the vast structure of the
earth sweep past--clumped woodlands, the bending sweep of the fields,
the huge flowing lift of the earth-waves, cyclic intersections
bewildering--the American earth--rude, immeasurable, formless,
mighty.

His mind was bound in the sad lulling magic of the
car wheels. Clackety-clack.  Clackety-clack. 
Clackety-clack.  Clackety-clack. He thought of his life as
something that had happened long ago.  He had found, at last,
his gateway to the lost world.  But did it lie before or behind
him?  Was he leaving or entering it?  Above the rhythm of
the wheels he thought of Eliza's laughter over ancient things. 
He saw a brief forgotten gesture, her white broad forehead, a ghost
of old grief in her eyes.  Ben, Gant?their strange lost voices. 
Their sad laughter.  They swam toward him through green walls of
fantasy.  They caught and twisted at his heart.  The green
ghost-glimmer of their faces coiled away.  Lost. Lost.

"Let's go for a smoke," said Max Isaacs.

They went back and stood wedged for stability on the
closed platform of the car.  They lighted cigarettes.

Light broke against the east, in a murky rim. 
The far dark was eaten cleanly away.  The horizon sky was barred
with hard fierce strips of light.  Still buried in night, they
looked across at the unimpinging sheet of day.  They looked
under the lifted curtain at brightness.  They were knifed
sharply away from it.  Then, gently, light melted across the
land like dew.  The world was gray.

The east broke out in ragged flame.  In the car,
the little waitress breathed deeply, sighed, and opened her clear
eyes.

Max Isaacs fumbled his cigarette awkwardly, looked at
Eugene, and grinned sheepishly with delight, craning his neck along
his collar, and making a nervous grimace of his white fuzz-haired
face.  His hair was thick, straight, the color of taffy. 
He had blond eyebrows.  There was much kindness in him. 
They looked at each other with clumsy tenderness.  They thought
of the lost years at Woodson Street.  They saw with decent
wonder their awkward bulk of puberty.  The proud gate of the
years swung open for them.  They felt a lonely glory.  They
said farewell.
 
 

Charleston, fat weed that roots itself on Lethe
wharf, lived in another time.  The hours were days, the days
weeks.

They arrived in the morning.  By noon, several
weeks had passed, and he longed for the day's ending.  They were
quartered in a small hotel on King Street--an old place above stores,
with big rooms. After lunch, they went out to see the town.  Max
Isaacs and Malvin Bowden turned at once toward the Navy Yard. 
Mrs. Bowden went with them.  Eugene was weary for sleep. 
He promised to meet them later.

When they had gone, he pulled off his shoes and took
off his coat and shirt, and lay down to sleep in a big dark room,
into which the warm sun fell in shuttered bars.  Time droned
like a sleepy October fly.

At five o'clock, Louise, the little waitress, came to
wake him. She, too, had wanted to sleep.  She knocked gently at
the door. When he did not answer, she opened it quietly and came in,
closing it behind her.  She came to the side of the bed and
looked at him for a moment.

"Eugene!" she whispered.  "Eugene."

He murmured drowsily, and stirred.  The little
waitress smiled and sat down on the bed.  She bent over him and
tickled him gently in the ribs, chuckling to see him squirm. 
Then she tickled the soles of his feet.  He wakened slowly,
yawning, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"What is it?" he said.

"It's time to go out there," she said.

"Out where?"

"To the Navy Yard.  We promised to meet
them."

"Oh, damn the Navy Yard!" he groaned. 
"I'd rather sleep."

"So would I!" she agreed.  She yawned
luxuriously, stretching her plump arms above her head.  "I'm
so sleepy.  I could stretch out anywhere."  She looked
meaningly at the bed.
 
 

He wakened at once, sensuously alert.  He lifted
himself upon one elbow: a hot torrent of blood swarmed through his
cheeks.  His pulses beat thickly.

"We're all alone up here," said Louise
smiling.  "We've got the whole floor to ourselves."

"Why don't you lie down and take a nap, if
you're still sleepy?" heasked.  "I'll wake you up,"
he added, with gentle chivalry.

"I've got such a little room.  It's hot and
stuffy.  That's why I got up," said Louise.  "What
a nice big room you've got!"

"Yes," he said.  "It's a nice big
bed, too."  They were silent a waiting moment.

"Why don't you lie down here, Louise?" he
said, in a low unsteady voice.  "I'll get up," he
added hastily, sitting up.  "I'll wake you."

"Oh, no," she said, "I wouldn't feel
right."

They were again silent.  She looked admiringly
at his thin young
arms.

"My!" she said.  "I bet you're
strong."

He flexed his long stringy muscles manfully, and
expanded his
chest.

"My!" she said.  "How old are
you, 'Gene?"

He was just at his fifteenth year.

"I'm going on sixteen," he said.  "How
old are you, Louise?"

"I'm eighteen," she said.  "I bet
you're a regular heart-breaker, 'Gene.  How many girls have you
got?"

"Oh--I don't know.  Not many," he said
truthfully enough.  He wanted to talk--he wanted to talk madly,
seductively, wickedly.  He would excite her by uttering, in
grave respectful tones, honestly, matter-of-factly, the most erotic
suggestions.
 
"I guess you
like the tall ones, don't you?" said Louise.  "A tall
fellow wouldn't want a little thing like me, would he? 
Although," she said quickly, "you never know.  They
say opposites attract each other."

"I don't like tall girls," said Eugene. 
"They're too skinny.  I like them about your size, when
they've got a good build."

"Have I got a good build, 'Gene?" said
Louise, holding her arms up and smiling.

"Yes, you have a pretty build, Louise--a fine
build," said Eugene earnestly.  "The kind I like."

"I haven't got a pretty face.  I've got an
ugly face," she said invitingly.

"You haven't got an ugly face.  You have a
pretty face," said Eugene firmly.  "Anyway, the face
doesn't matter much with me," he added, subtly.

"What do you like best, 'Gene?" Louise
asked.

He thought carefully and gravely.

"Why," he said, "a woman ought to have
pretty legs.  Sometimes a woman has an ugly face, but a pretty
leg.  The prettiest legs I ever saw were on a High Yellow."

"Were they prettier than mine?" said the
waitress, with an easy laugh.

She crossed her legs slowly and displayed her
silk-shod ankle.

"I don't know, Louise," he said, staring
critically.  "I can't see enough."

"Is that enough?" she said, pulling her
tight skirt above her calves.

"No," said Eugene.

"Is that?" she pulled her skirt back over
her knees, and displayed her plump thighs, gartered with a ruffled
band of silk and red rosettes.  She thrust her small feet out,
coyly turning the toes in.

"Lord!" said Eugene, staring with keen
interest at the garter.  "I never saw any like that
before.  That's pretty."  He gulped noisily. 
"Don't those things hurt you, Louise?"

"Uh-uh," she said, as if puzzled, "why?"

"I should think they'd cut into your skin,"
he said.  "I know mine do if I wear them too tight. 
See."

He pulled up his trousers' leg and showed his young
gartered shank, lightly spired with hair.

Louise looked, and felt the garter gravely with a
plump hand.

"Mine don't hurt me," she said.  She
snapped the elastic with a ripe smack.  "See!"

"Let me see," he said.  He placed his
trembling fingers lightly upon her garter.

"Yes," he said unsteadily.  "I
see."