Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (62 page)

It was during this bitter and desperate autumn that
Eugene first met Jim Trivett.

Jim Trivett, the son of a rich tobacco farmer in the
eastern part of the State, was a good tempered young tough of twenty
years.  He was a strong, rather foul-looking boy, with a coarse
protruding mouth, full-meated and slightly ajar, constantly rayed
with a faint loose smile and blotted at the comer with a brown smear
of tobacco juice.  He had bad teeth.  His hair was
light-brown, dry, and unruly: it stuck out in large untidy mats. 
He was dressed in the last cheap extreme of the dreadful fashion of
the time: skin-tight trousers that ended an inch above his oxford
shoes exposing an inch of clocked hose, a bobtailed coat belted in
across his kidneys, large striped collars of silk.  Under his
coat he wore a big sweater with high-school numerals.

Jim Trivett lived with several other students from
his community in a lodging-house near Mrs. Bradley's but closer to
the west gate of the university.  There were four young men
banded together for security and companionship in two untidy rooms
heated to a baking dryness by small cast-iron stoves.  They made
constant preparations for study, but they never studied: one would
enter sternly, announcing that he had "a hell of a day
tomorrow," and begin the most minute preparations for a long
contest with his books: he would sharpen his pencils carefully and
deliberately, adjust his lamp, replenish the red-hot stove, move his
chair, put on an eye-shade, clean his pipe, stuff it carefully with
tobacco, light, relight, and empty it, then, with an expression of
profound relief, hear a rapping on his door.

"Come in the house, Goddamn it!" he would
roar hospitably.

"Hello, 'Gene!  Pull up a chair, son, and
sit down," said Tom Grant.  He was a thickly built boy,
gaudily dressed; he had a low forehead, black hair, and a kind,
stupid, indolent temper.

"Have you been working?"

"Hell, yes!" shouted Jim Trivett. 
"I've been working like a son-of-a-bitch."

"God!" said Tom Grant, turning slowly to
look at him.  "Boy, you're going to choke to death on one
of those some day."  He shook his head slowly and sadly,
then continued with a rough laugh:  "If old man Trivett
knew what you were doing with his money, damn if he wouldn't bust a
gut."

"Gene!" said Jim Trivett, "what the
hell do you know about this damned English, anyway?"

"What he doesn't know about it," said Tom
Grant, "you could write out on the back of a postage stamp. 
Old man Sanford thinks you're hell, 'Gene."

"I thought you had Torrington," said Jim
Trivett.

"No," said Eugene, "I wasn't English
enough.  Young and crude.  I changed, thank God!  What
is it you want, Jim?" he asked.

"I've got a long paper to write.  I don't
know what to write about," said Jim Trivett.

"What do you want me to do?  Write it for
you?"

"Yes," said Jim Trivett.

"Write your own damn paper," said Eugene
with mimic toughness, "I won't do it for you.  I'll help
you if I can."

"When are you going to let Hard Boy take you to
Exeter?" said Tom Grant, winking at Jim Trivett.

Eugene flushed, making a defensive answer.

"I'm ready to go any time he is," he said
uneasily.

"Look here, Legs!" said Jim Trivett,
grinning loosely.  "Do you really want to go with me or are
you just bluffing?"

"I'll go with you!  I've told you I'd go
with you!" Eugene said angrily.  He trembled a little.

Tom Grant grinned slyly at Jim Trivett.

"It'll make a man of you, 'Gene," he said. 
"Boy, it'll sure put hair on your chest."  He laughed,
not loudly, but uncontrollably, shaking his head as at some secret
thought.

Jim Trivett's loose smile widened.  He spat into
the wood-box.

"Gawd!" he said.  "They'll think
Spring is here when they see old Legs.  They'll need a
stepladder to git at him."

Tom Grant was shaken with hard fat laughter.

"They sure God will!" he said.

"Well, what about it, 'Gene?" Jim Trivett
demanded suddenly.  "Is it a go?  Saturday?"

"Suits me!" said Eugene.

When he had gone, they grinned thirstily at each
other for a moment, the pleased corrupters of chastity.

"Pshaw!" said Tom Grant.  "You
oughtn't to do that, Hard Boy. You're leading the boy astray."

"It's not going to hurt him," said Jim
Trivett.  "It'll be good for him."

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand,
grinning.
 
 

"Wait a minute!" whispered Jim Trivett. 
"I think this is the place."

They had turned away from the centre of the dreary
tobacco town. For a quarter of an hour they had walked briskly
through drab autumnal streets, descending finally a long rutted hill
that led them, past a thinning squalor of cheap houses, almost to
theoutskirts.  It was three weeks before Christmas: the foggy
air was full of chill menace.  There was a brooding quietness,
broken by far small sounds.  They turned into a sordid little
road, unpaved, littered on both sides with negro shacks and the
dwellings of poor whites.  It was a world of rickets.  The
road was unlighted.  Their feet stirred dryly through fallen
leaves.

They paused before a two-storey frame house.  A
lamp burned dimly behind lowered yellow shades, casting a murky
pollen out upon the smoky air.

"Wait a minute," said Jim Trivett, in a low
voice, "I'll find out."

They heard scuffling steps through the leaves. 
In a moment a negro man prowled up.

"Hello, John," said Jim Trivett, almost
inaudibly.

"Evenin', boss!" the negro answered
wearily, but in the same tone.

"We're looking for Lily Jones' house," said
Jim Trivett.  "Is this it?"

"Yes, suh," said the negro, "dis is
it."

Eugene leaned against a tree, listening to their
quiet conspiratorial talk.  The night, vast and listening,
gathered about him its evil attentive consciousness.  His lips
were cold and trembled.  He thrust a cigarette between them and,
shivering, turned up the thick collar of his overcoat.

"Does Miss Lily know you're comin'?" the
negro asked.

"No," said Jim Trivett.  "Do you
know her?"

"Yes, suh," said the negro.  "I'll
go up dar wid yo'."

Eugene waited in the shadow of the tree while the two
men went up to the house.  They avoided the front veranda, and
went around tothe side.  The negro rapped gently at a latticed
door.  There were always latticed doors.  Why?

He waited, saying farewell to himself.  He stood
over his life, he felt, with lifted assassin blade.  He was
mired to his neck, inextricably, in complication.  There was no
escape.

There had been a faint closed noise from the house:
voices and laughter, and the cracked hoarse tone of an old
phonograph.  The sound stopped quickly as the negro rapped: the
shabby house seemed to listen.  In a moment, a hinge creaked
stealthily: he caught the low startled blur of a woman's voice. 
Who is it?  Who?

In another moment Jim Trivett returned to him, and
said quietly:

"It's all right, 'Gene.  Come on."

He slipped a coin into the negro's hand, thanking
him.  Eugene looked for a moment into the black broad
friendliness of the man's face.  He had a flash of warmth
through his cold limbs.  The black bawd had done his work
eagerly and kindly: over their bought unlovely loves lay the warm
shadow of his affection.
 
They
ascended the path quietly and, mounting two or three steps, went in
under the latticed door.  A woman stood beside it, holding it
open.  When they had entered, she closed it securely.  Then
they crossed the little porch and entered the house.

They found themselves in a little hall which cleft
the width of the house.  A smoky lamp, wicked low, cast its dim
circle into the dark.  An uncarpeted stair mounted to the second
floor.  There were two doors both to left and right, and an
accordion hat-rack, on which hung a man's battered felt hat.

Jim Trivett embraced the woman immediately, grinning,
and fumbling in her breast.

"Hello, Lily," he said.

"Gawd!"  She smiled crudely, and
continued to peer at Eugene, curious at what the maw of night had
thrown in to her.  Then, turning to Jim Trivett with a coarse
laugh, she said:

"Lord a' mercy!  Any woman that gits him
will have to cut off some of them legs."

"I'd like to see him with Thelma," said Jim
Trivett, grinning.

Lily Jones laughed hoarsely.  The door to the
right opened and Thelma, a small woman, slightly built, came out,
followed by high empty yokel laughter.  Jim Trivett embraced her
affectionately.

"My Gawd!" said Thelma, in a tinny voice. 
"What've we got here?" She thrust out her sharp wrenny
face, and studied Eugene insolently.

"I brought you a new beau, Thelma," said
Jim Trivett.

"Ain't he the lankiest feller you ever seen?"
said Lily Jones impersonally.  "How tall are you, son?"
she added, addressing him in a kind drawl.

He winced a little.

"I don't know," he said.  "I
think about six three."

"He's more than that!" said Thelma
positively.  "He's seven foot tall or I'm a liar."

"He hasn't measured since last week," said
Jim Trivett.  "He can't be sure about it."

"He's young, too," said Lily, staring at
him intently.  "How old are you, son?"

Eugene turned his pallid face away, indefinitely.

"Why," he croaked, "I'm about--"

"He's going on eighteen," said Jim Trivett
loyally.  "Don't you worry about him.  Old Legs knows
all the ropes, all right.  He's a bearcat.  I wouldn't kid
you.  He's been there."

"He don't look that old," said Lily
doubtfully.  "I wouldn't call him more'n fifteen, to look
at his face.  Ain't he got a little face, though?" she
demanded in a slow puzzled voice.

"It's the only one I've got," said Eugene
angrily.  "Sorry I can't change it for a larger one."

"It looks so funny stickin' way up there above
you," she went on patiently.

Thelma nudged her sharply.

"That's because he's got a big frame," she
said.  "Legs is all right.  When he begins to fill out
an' put some meat on them bones he's goin' to make a big man. 
You'll be a heartbreaker sure, Legs," she said harshly, taking
his cold hand and squeezing it.  In him the ghost, his stranger,
turned grievously away.  O God!  I shall remember, he
thought.

"Well," said Jim Trivett, "let's git
goin'."  He embraced Thelma again.  They fumbled
amorously.

"You go on upstairs, son," said Lily. 
"I'll be up in a minute. The door's open."

"See you later, 'Gene," said Jim Trivett. 
"Stay with them, son."

He hugged the boy roughly with one arm, and went into
the room to the left with Thelma.

Eugene mounted the creaking stairs slowly and entered
the room with the open door.  A hot mass of coals glowed
flamelessly in the hearth.  He took off his hat and overcoat and
threw them across a wooden bed.  Then he sat down tensely in a
rocker and leaned forward, holding his trembling fingers to the
heat.  There was no light save that of the coals; but, by their
dim steady glow, he could make out the old and ugly wall-paper,
stained with long streaks of water rust, and scaling, in dry tattered
scrolls, here and there.  He sat quietly, bent forward, but he
shook violently, as with an ague, from time to time.  Why am I
here?  This is not I, he thought.

Presently he heard the woman's slow heavy tread upon
the stairs: she entered in a swimming tide of light, bearing a lamp
before her. She put the lamp down on a table and turned the wick. 
He could see her now more plainly.  Lily was a middle-aged
country woman, with a broad heavy figure, unhealthily soft.  Her
smooth peasant face was mapped with fine little traceries of wrinkles
at the corners of mouth and eyes, as if she had worked much in the
sun.  She had black hair, coarse and abundant.  She was
whitely plastered with talcum powder.  She was dressed
shapelessly in a fresh loose dress of gingham, unbelted.  She
was dressed like a housewife, but she conceded to her profession
stockings of red silk, and slippers of red felt, trimmed with fur, in
which she walked with a flat-footed tread.

The woman fastened the door, and returned to the
hearth where the boy was now standing.  He embraced her with
feverish desire, fondling her with his long nervous hands. 
Indecisively, he sat in the rocker and drew her down clumsily on his
knee.  She yielded her kisses with the coy and frigid modesty of
the provincial harlot, turning her mouth away.  She shivered as
his cold hands touched her.

"You're cold as ice, son," she said. 
"What's the matter?"

She chafed him with rough embarrassed
professionalism.  In a moment she rose impatiently.