Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (68 page)

Then they held each other
tightly in their cool young arms, and kissed many times with young
lips and faces.  All her hair fell down about her like thick
corn-silk, in a sweet loose wantonness. Her straight dainty legs were
clad in snug little green bloomers, gathered in by an elastic above
the knee.

They were locked limb to
limb: he kissed the smooth sheen of her arms and shoulders--the
passion that numbed his limbs was governed by a religious ecstasy. 
He wanted to hold her, and go away by himself to think about her.

He stooped, thrusting his
arm under her knees, and lifted her up exultantly.  She looked
at him frightened, holding him more tightly.

"What are you
doing?" she whispered.  "Don't hurt me."

"I won't hurt you,
my dear," he said.  "I'm going to put you to bed. 
Yes.  I'm going to put you to bed.  Do you hear?" 
He felt he must cry out in his throat for joy.

He carried her over and
laid her on the bed.  Then he knelt beside her, putting his arm
beneath her and gathering her to him.

"Good-night, my
dear.  Kiss me good-night.  Do you love me?"

"Yes." 
She kissed him.  "Good-night, my darling.  Don't go
back by the window.  You may fall."

But he went, as he came,
reaching through the moonlight exultantly like a cat.  For a
long time he lay awake, in a quiet delirium, his heart thudding
fiercely against his ribs.  Sleep crept across his senses with
goose-soft warmth: the young leaves of the maples rustled, a cock
sounded his distant elfin minstrelsy, the ghost of a dog howled. 
He slept.
 
 

He awoke with a high hot
sun beating in on his face through the porch awnings.  He hated
to awake in sunlight.  Some day he would sleep in a great room
that was always cool and dark.  There would be trees and vines
at his windows, or the scooped-out lift of the hill.  His
clothing was wet with night-damp as he dressed.  When he went
downstairs he found Gant rocking miserably upon the porch, his hand
gripped over a walkingstick.

"Good-morning,"
he said, "how do you feel?"

His father cast his
uneasy flickering eyes on him, and groaned.

"Merciful God! 
I'm being punished for my sins."

"You'll feel better
in a little," said Eugene.  "Did you eat anything?"

"It stuck in my
throat," said Gant, who had eaten heartily.  "I
couldn't swallow a bite.  How's your hand, son?" he asked
very humbly.

"Oh, it's all
right," said Eugene quickly.  "Who told you about my
hand?"

"She said I had hurt
your hand," said Gant sorrowfully.

"Ah-h!" said
the boy angrily.  "No.  I wasn't hurt."

Gant leaned to the side
and, without looking, clumsily, patted his son's uninjured hand.

"I'm sorry for what
I've done," he said.  "I'm a sick man.  Do you
need money?"

"No," said
Eugene, embarrassed.  "I have all I need."

"Come to the office
to-day, and I'll give you something," said Gant.  "Poor
child, I suppose you're hard up."

But instead, he waited
until Laura James returned from her morning visit to the city's
bathing-pool.  She came with her bathing-suit in one hand, and
several small packages in the other.  More arrived by negro
carriers.  She paid and signed,

"You must have a lot
of money, Laura?" he said.  "You do this every day,
don't you?"

"Daddy gets after me
about it," she admitted, "but I love to buy clothes. 
I spend all my money on clothes."

"What are you going
to do now?"

"Nothing--whatever
you like.  It's a lovely day to do something, isn't it?"

"It's a lovely day
to do nothing.  Would you like to go off somewhere, Laura?"

"I'd love to go off
somewhere with you," said Laura James.

"That is the idea,
my girl.  That is the idea," he said exultantly, in throaty
and exuberant burlesque.  "We will go off somewhere
alone--we will take along something to eat," he said lusciously.

Laura went to her room
and put on a pair of sturdy little slippers. Eugene went into the
kitchen.

"Have you a
shoe-box?" he asked Eliza.

"What do you want
that for?" she said suspiciously.

"I'm going to the
bank," he said ironically.  "I wanted something to
carry my money in."  But immediately he added roughly:

"I'm going on a
picnic."

"Huh?  Hah? 
What's that you say?" said Eliza.  "A picnic? 
Who are you going with?  That girl?"

"No," he said
heavily, "with President Wilson, the King of England, and Dr.
Doak.  We're going to have lemonade--I've promised to bring the
lemons."

"I'll vow, boy!"
said Eliza fretfully.  "I don't like it?your running off
this way when I need you.  I wanted you to make a deposit for
me, and the telephone people will disconnect me if I don't send them
the money to-day."

"O mama!  For
God's sake!" he cried annoyed.  "You always need me
when I want to go somewhere.  Let them wait!  They can wait
a day."

"It's overdue,"
she said.  "Well, here you are.  I wish I had time to
go off on picnics."  She fished a shoe-box out of a pile of
magazines and newspapers that littered the top of a low cupboard.

"Have you got
anything to eat?"

"We'll get it,"
he said, and departed.

They went down the hill,
and paused at the musty little grocery around the corner on Woodson
Street, where they bought crackers, peanut butter, currant jelly,
bottled pickles, and a big slice of rich yellow cheese.  The
grocer was an old Jew who muttered jargon into a rabbi's beard as if
saying a spell against Dybbuks.  The boy looked closely to see
if his hands touched the food.  They were not clean.

On their way up the hill,
they stopped for a few minutes at Gant's. They found Helen and Ben in
the dining-room.  Ben was eating breakfast, bending, as usual,
with scowling attention, over his coffee, turning from eggs and bacon
almost with disgust.  Helen insisted on contributing boiled eggs
and sandwiches to their provision: the two women went back into the
kitchen.  Eugene sat at table with Ben, drinking coffee.

"O-oh my God!"
Ben said at length, yawning wearily.  He lighted a cigarette. 
"How's the Old Man this morning?"

"He's all right, I
think.  Said he couldn't eat breakfast."

"Did he say anything
to the boarders?"

"'You damned
scoundrels!  You dirty Mountain Grills!  Whee--!' That was
all."

Ben snickered quietly.

"Did he hurt your
hand?  Let's see."

"No.  You can't
see anything.  It's not hurt," said Eugene, lifting his
bandaged wrist.

"He didn't hit you,
did he?" asked Ben sternly.
 
"Oh,
no.  Of course not.  He was just drunk.  He was sorry
about it this morning."

"Yes," said
Ben, "he's always sorry about it--after he's raised all the hell
he can."  He drank deeply at his cigarette, inhaling the
smoke as if in the grip of a powerful drug.

"How'd you get along
at college this year, 'Gene?" he asked presently.

"I passed my work. 
I made fair grades--if that's what you mean?  I did better--this
Spring," he added, with some difficulty.  "It was hard
getting started--at the beginning."

"You mean last
Fall?"

Eugene nodded.

"What was the
matter?" said Ben, scowling at him.  "Did the other
boys make fun of you?"

"Yes," said
Eugene, in a low voice.

"Why did they? 
You mean they didn't think you were good enough for them?  Did
they look down on you?  Was that it?" said Ben savagely.

"No," said
Eugene, very red in the face.  "No.  That had nothing
to do with it.  I look funny, I suppose.  I looked funny to
them."

"What do you mean
you look funny?" said Ben pugnaciously.  "There's
nothing wrong with you, you know, if you didn't go around looking
like a bum.  In God's name," he exclaimed angrily, "when
did you get that hair cut last?  What do you think you are: the
Wild Man from Borneo?"

"I don't like
barbers!" Eugene burst out furiously.  "That's why! I
don't want them to go sticking their damned dirty fingers in my
mouth.  Whose business is it, if I never get my hair cut?"

"A man is judged by
his appearance to-day," said Ben sententiously. "I was
reading an article by a big business man in The Post the other day. 
He says he always looks at a man's shoes before he gives him a job."

He spoke seriously,
haltingly, in the same way that he read, without genuine conviction. 
Eugene writhed to hear his fierce condor prattle this stale hash of
the canny millionaires, like any obedient parrot in a teller's cage. 
Ben's voice had a dull flat quality as he uttered these admirable
opinions: he seemed to grope behind it all for some answer, with hurt
puzzled eyes.  As he faltered along, with scowling intensity,
through a success-sermon, there was something poignantly moving in
his effort: it was the effort of his strange and lonely spirit to
find some entrance into life--to find success, position,
companionship.  And it was as if, spelling the words out with
his mouth, a settler in the Bronx from the fat Lombard plain, should
try to unriddle the new world by deciphering the World Almanac, or as
if some woodsman, trapped by the winter, and wasted by an obscure and
terrible disease, should hunt its symptoms and its cure in a book of
Household Remedies.

"Did the Old Man
send you enough money to get along on?" Ben asked. "Were
you able to hold your own with the other boys?  He can afford
it, you know.  Don't let him stint you.  Make him give it
to you, 'Gene."

"I had plenty,"
said Eugene, "all that I needed."

"This is the time
you need it--not later," said Ben.  "Make him put you
through college.  This is an age of specialization. 
They're looking for college-trained men."

"Yes," said
Eugene.  He spoke obediently, indifferently, the hard bright
mail of his mind undinted by the jargon: within, the Other One, who
had no speech, saw.

"So get your
education," said Ben, scowling vaguely.  "All the Big
Men--Ford, Edison, Rockefeller--whether they had it or not, say it's
a good thing."

"Why didn't you go
yourself?" said Eugene curiously.

"I didn't have any
one to tell me," said Ben.  "Besides, you don't think
the Old Man would give me anything, do you?"  He laughed
cynically.  "It's too late now."

He was silent a moment;
he smoked.

"You didn't know I
was taking a course in advertising, did you?" he asked,
grinning.

"No.  Where?"

"Through the
Correspondence School," said Ben.  "I get my lessons
every week.  I don't know," he laughed diffidently, "I
must be good at it.  I make the highest grades they have--98 or
100 every time. I get a diploma, if I finish the course."

A blinding mist swam
across the younger brother's eyes.  He did not know why.  A
convulsive knot gathered in his throat.  He bent his head
quickly and fumbled for his cigarettes.  In a moment he said:

"I'm glad you're
doing it.  I hope you finish, Ben."

"You know," Ben
said seriously, "they've turned out some Big Men. I'll show you
the testimonials some time.  Men who started with nothing: now
they're holding down big jobs."

"I hope you do,"
said Eugene.

"So, you see you're
not the only College Man around here," said Ben with a grin. 
In a moment, he went on gravely:  "You're the last hope,
'Gene.  Go on and finish up, if you have to steal the money. The
rest of us will never amount to a damn.  Try to make something
out of yourself.  Hold your head up!  You're as good as any
of them--a damn sight better than these little pimps about town." 
He became very fierce; he was very excited.  He got up suddenly
from the table.  "Don't let them laugh at you!  By
God, we're as good as they are.  If any of them laughs at you
again, pick up the first damn thing you get your hand on and knock
him down.  Do you hear?" In his fierce excitement he
snatched up the heavy carving steel from the table and brandished it.

"Yes," said
Eugene awkwardly.  "I think it's going to be all right
now.  I didn't know how to do at first."

"I hope you have
sense enough now to leave those old hookers alone?" said Ben
very sternly.  Eugene made no answer.  "You can't do
that and be anything, you know.  And you're likely to catch
everything.  This looks like a nice girl," he said quietly,
after a pause.  "For heaven's sake, fix yourself up and try
to keep fairly clean.  Women notice that, you know.  Look
at your fingernails, and keep your clothes pressed.  Have you
any money?"

"All I need,"
said Eugene, looking nervously toward the kitchen. "Don't, for
God's sake!"

"Put it in your
pocket, you little fool," Ben said angrily, thrusting a bill
into his hand.  "You've got to have some money. Keep it
until you need it."