Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (67 page)

And he knew that it
did--how much he did not know.  But he had his moment.  He
was not afraid of pain, he was not afraid of loss.  He cared
nothing for the practical need of the world.  He dared to say
the strange and marvellous thing that had bloomed so darkly in him.

"Laura," he
said, hearing his low voice sound over the great plain of the moon,
"let's always love each other as we do now.  Let's never
get married.  I want you to wait for me and to love me forever. 
I am going all over the world.  I shall go away for years at a
time; I shall become famous, but I shall always come back to you. 
You shall live in a house away in the mountains, you shall wait for
me, and keep yourself for me.  Will you?" he said, asking
for her life as calmly as for an hour of her time.

"Yes, dear,"
said Laura in the moonlight, "I will wait for you forever."

She was buried in his
flesh.  She throbbed in the beat of his pulses.  She was
wine in his blood, a music in his heart.
 
 

"He has no
consideration for you or any one else," Hugh Barton growled. 
He had returned late from work at his office, to take Helen home. 
"If he can't do better than this, we'll find a house of our
own.  I'm not going to have you get down sick on account of
him."

"Forget about it,"
Helen said.  "He's getting old."

They came out on the
veranda.

"Come down
to-morrow, honey," she said to Eugene.  "I'll give you
a real feed.  Laura, you come too.  It's not always like
this, you know."  She laughed, fondling the girl with a big
hand.

They coasted away
downhill.

"What a lovely girl
your sister is," said Laura James.  "Aren't you simply
crazy about her?"

Eugene made no answer for
a moment.

"Yes," he said.

"She is about you. 
Any one can see that," said Laura.

In the darkness he caught
at his throat.

"Yes," he said.

The moon quartered gently
across heaven.  Eliza came out again, timidly, hesitantly.

"Who's there? 
Who's there?" she spoke into the darkness.  "Where's
'Gene?  Oh!  I didn't know!  Are you there, son?" 
She knew very well.

"Yes," he said.

"Why don't you sit
down, Mrs. Gant?" asked Laura.  "I don't see how you
stand that hot kitchen all day long.  You must be worn out."

"I tell you what!"
said Eliza, peering dimly at the sky.  "It's a fine night,
isn't it?  As the fellow says, a night for lovers." She
laughed uncertainly, then stood for a moment in thought.

"Son," she said
in a troubled voice, "why don't you go to bed and get some
sleep?  It's not good for you staying up till all hours like
this."

"That's where I
should be," said Laura James, rising.
 
"Yes,
child," said Eliza.  "Go get your beauty sleep. 
As the saying goes, early to bed and early to rise--"

"Let's all go,
then.  Let's all go!" said Eugene impatiently and angrily,
wondering if she must always be the last one awake in that house.

"Why law, no!"
said Eliza.  "I can't, boy.  I've all those things to
iron."

Beside him, Laura gave
his hand a quiet squeeze, and rose. Bitterly, he watched his loss.

"Good-night, all. 
Good-night, Mrs. Gant."

"Good-night, child."

When she had gone, Eliza
sat down beside him, with a sigh of weariness.

"I tell you what,"
she said.  "That feels good.  I wish I had as much
time as some folks, and could sit out here enjoying the air." In
the darkness, he knew her puckering lips were trying to smile.

"Hm!" she said,
and caught his hand in her rough palm.  "Has my baby gone
and got him a girl?"

"What of it? 
What if it were true?" he said angrily.  "Haven't I a
right as much as any one?"

"Pshaw!" said
Eliza.  "You're too young to think of them.  I
wouldn't pay any attention to them, if I were you.  Most of them
haven't an idea in the world except going out to parties and having a
good time.  I don't want my boy to waste his time on them."

He felt her earnestness
beneath her awkward banter.  He struggled in a chaos of confused
fury, trying for silence.  At last he spoke in a low voice,
filled with his passion:

"We've got to have
something, mama.  We've got to have something, you know. 
We can't go on always alone--alone."

It was dark.  No one
could see.  He let the gates swing open.  He wept.

"I know!" Eliza
agreed hastily.  "I'm not saying--"

"My God, my God,
where are we going?  What's it all about?  He's
dying--can't you see it?  Don't you know it?  Look at his
life. Look at yours.  No light, no love, no comfort--nothing." 
His voice rose frantically: he beat on his ribs like a drum. 
"Mama, mama, in God's name, what is it?  What do you want? 
Are you going to strangle and drown us all?  Don't you own
enough?  Do you want more string?  Do you want more
bottles?  By God, I'll go around collecting them if you say
so."  His voice had risen almost to a scream.  "But
tell me what you want.  Don't you own enough?  Do you want
the town?  What is it?"

"Why, I don't know
what you're talking about, boy," said Eliza angrily.  "If
I hadn't tried to accumulate a little property none of you would have
had a roof to call your own, for your papa, I can assure you, would
have squandered everything."

"A roof to call our
own!" he yelled, with a crazy laugh.  "Good God, we
haven't a bed to call our own.  We haven't a room to call our
own.  We have not a quilt to call our own that might not be
taken from us to warm the mob that rocks upon this porch and
grumbles."

"Now, you may sneer
at the boarders all you like--" Eliza began sternly.

"No," he said. 
"I can't.  There's not breath or strength enough in me to
sneer at them all I like."

Eliza began to weep.

"I've done the best
I could!" she said.  "I'd have given you a home if I
could.  I'd have put up with anything after Grover's death, but
he never gave me a moment's peace.  Nobody knows what I've been
through.  Nobody knows, child.  Nobody knows."

He saw her face in the
moonlight, contorted by an ugly grimace of sorrow.  What she had
said, he knew, was fair and honest.  He was touched deeply.

"It's all right,
mama," he said painfully.  "Forget about it!  I
know."

She seized his hand
almost gratefully and laid her white face, still twisted with her
grief, against his shoulder.  It was the gesture of a child; a
gesture that asked for love, pity, and tenderness.  It tore up
great roots in him, bloodily.

"Don't!" he
said.  "Don't, mama!  Please!"

"Nobody knows,"
said Eliza.  "Nobody knows.  I need some one too. I've
had a hard life, son, full of pain and trouble."  Slowly,
like a child again, she wiped her wet weak eyes with the back of her
hand.

Ah, he thought, as his
heart twisted in him full of wild pain and regret, she will be dead
some day and I shall always remember this. Always this.  This.

They were silent a
moment.  He held her rough hand tightly, and kissed her.

"Well," Eliza
began, full of cheerful prophecy, "I tell you what: I'm not
going to spend my life slaving away here for a lot of boarders. 
They needn't think it.  I'm going to set back and take things as
easy as any of them."  She winked knowingly at him. "When
you come home next time, you may find me living in a big house in
Doak Park.  I've got the lot--the best lot out there for view
and location, far better than the one W. J. Bryan has.  I made
the trade with old Dr. Doak himself, the other day.  Look here!
What about!"  She laughed.  "He said, 'Mrs. Gant,
I can't trust any of my agents with you.  If I'm to make
anything on this deal, I've got to look out.  You're the
sharpest trader in this town.'  'Why, pshaw!  Doctor,' I
said (I never let on I believed him or anything), 'all I want is a
fair return on my investment.  I believe in every one making his
profit and giving the other fellow a chance.  Keep the ball
a-rolling!' I said, laughing as big as you please.  'Why, Mrs.
Gant!' he said--"  She was off on a lengthy divagation,
recording with an absorbed gusto the interminable minutia of her
transaction with the worthy Quinine King, with the attendant
phenomena, during the time, of birds, bees, flowers, sun, clouds,
dogs, cows, and people.  She was pleased.  She was happy.

Presently, returning to
an abrupt reflective pause, she said: "Well, I may do it. 
I want a place where my children can come to see me and bring their
friends, when they come home."

"Yes," he said,
"yes.  That would be nice.  You mustn't work all your
life."

He was pleased at her
happy fable: for a moment he almost believed in a miracle of
redemption, although the story was an old one to him.

"I hope you do,"
he said.  "It would be nice. . . .  Go on to bed now,
why don't you, mama?  It's getting late."  He rose. 
"I'm going now."

"Yes, son," she
said, getting up.  "You ought to.  Well, good-night." 
They kissed with a love, for the time, washed clean of bitterness. 
Eliza went before him into the dark house.

But before he went to
bed, he descended to the kitchen for matches. She was still there,
beyond the long littered table, at her ironing board, flanked by two
big piles of laundry.  At his accusing glance she said hastily:

"I'm a-going. 
Right away.  I just wanted to finish up these towels."

He rounded the table,
before he left, to kiss her again.  She fished into a button-box
on the sewing-machine and dug out the stub of a pencil. 
Gripping it firmly above an old envelope, she scrawled out on the
ironing board a rough mapping.  Her mind was still lulled in its
project.

"Here, you see,"
she began, "is Sunset Avenue, coming up the hill. This is Doak
Place, running off here at right angles.  Now this corner-lot
here belongs to Dick Webster; and right here above it, at the very
top is--"

Is, he thought, staring
with dull interest, the place where the Buried Treasure lies. 
Ten paces N.N.E. from the Big Rock, at the roots of the Old Oak
Tree.  He went off into his delightful fantasy while she
talked.  What if there WAS a buried treasure on one of Eliza's
lots?  If she kept on buying, there might very well be.  Or
why not an oil-well?  Or a coal-mine?  These famous
mountains were full (they said) of minerals.  150 Bbl. a day
right in the backyard.  How much would that be?  At $3.00 a
Bbl., there would be over $50.00 a day for every one in the family. 
The world is ours!

"You see, don't
you?" she smiled triumphantly.  "And right there is
where I shall build.  That lot will bring twice its present
value in five years."

"Yes," he said,
kissing her.  "Good-night, mama.  For God's sake, go
to bed and get some sleep."

"Good-night, son,"
said Eliza.

He went out and began to
mount the dark stairs.  Benjamin Gant, entering at this moment,
stumbled across a mission-chair in the hall.  He cursed
fiercely, and struck at the chair with his hand. Damn it!  Oh
damn it!  Mrs. Pert whispered a warning behind him, with a fuzzy
laugh.  Eugene paused, then mounted softly the carpeted stair,
so that he would not be heard, entering the sleeping-porch at the top
of the landing on which he slept.

He did not turn on the
light, because he disliked seeing the raw blistered varnish of the
dresser and the bent white iron of the bed.  It sagged, and the
light was dim--he hated dim lights, and the large moths, flapping
blindly around on their dusty wings.  He undressed in the moon. 
The moonlight fell upon the earth like a magic unearthly dawn. 
It wiped away all rawness, it hid all sores. It gave all common and
familiar things--the sagging drift of the barn, the raw shed of the
creamery, the rich curve of the lawyer's crab-apple trees--a uniform
bloom of wonder.  He lighted a cigarette, watching its red
glowing suspiration in the mirror, and leaned upon the rail of his
porch, looking out.  Presently, he grew aware that Laura James,
eight feet away, was watching him.  The moonlight fell upon
them, bathing their flesh in a green pallor, and steeping them in its
silence.  Their faces were blocked in miraculous darkness, out
of which, seeing but unseen, their bright eyes lived.  They
gazed at each other in that elfin light, without speaking.  In
the room below them, the light crawled to his father's bed, swam up
the cover, and opened across his face, thrust sharply upward. 
The air of the night, the air of the hills, fell on the boy's bare
flesh like a sluice of clear water.  His toes curled in to grip
wet grasses.

On the landing, he heard
Mrs. Pert go softly up to bed, fumbling with blind care at the
walls.  Doors creaked and clicked.  The house grew solidly
into quiet, like a stone beneath the moon.  They looked, waiting
for a spell and the conquest of time.  Then she spoke to
him--her whisper of his name was only a guess at sound. He threw his
leg across the rail, and thrust his long body over space to the sill
of her window, stretching out like a cat.  She drew her breath
in sharply, and cried out softly, "No!  No!" but she
caught his arms upon the sills and held him as he twisted in.