Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (71 page)

Upon the darkening porch,
awaiting food, the boarders rocked, oh rocked with laughter.

The boarders said: 
"Eugene's lost his girl.  He doesn't know what to do, he's
lost his girl."

"Well, well! 
Did the Old Boy lose his girl?"

The little fat girl, the
daughter of one of the two fat sisters whose husbands were hotel
clerks in Charleston, skipped to and from him, in slow May dance,
with fat calves twinkling brownly above her socks.

"Lost his girl! 
Lost his girl!  Eugene, Eugene, has lost his girl."

The fat little girl
skipped back to her fat mother for approbation: they regarded each
other with complacent smiles loosely netted in their full-meated
mouths.

"Don't let them kid
you, big boy.  What's the matter: did some one get your girl?"
asked Mr. Hake, the flour salesman.  He was a dapper young man
of twenty-six years, who smoked large cigars; he had a tapering face,
and a high domey head, bald on top, fringed sparsely with fine blond
hair.  His mother, a large grass-widow near fifty, with the
powerful craggy face of an Indian, a large mass of dyed yellow hair,
and a coarse smile, full of gold and heartiness, rocked mightily,
laughing with hoarse compassion:

"Git another girl,
'Gene.  Why, law!  I'd not let it bother me two minutes." 
He always expected her to spit, emphatically, with gusto, after
speaking.
 
"You should worry,
boy.  You should WORRY!" said Mr. Farrel, of Miami, the
dancing instructor.  "Women are like street-cars: if you
miss one, there's another along in fifteen minutes.  Ain't that
right, lady?" he said pertly, turning to Miss Clark, of
Valdosta, Georgia, for whom it had been uttered.  She answered
with a throaty confused twiddle-giggle of laughter.  "Oh,
aren't men the awfullest--"

Leaning upon the porch
rail in the thickening dusk, Mr. Jake Clapp, a well-to-do widower
from Old Hominy, pursued his stealthy courtship of Miss Florry
Mangle, the trained nurse.  Her limp face made a white blot in
the darkness; she spoke in a tired whine:
 
"I
thought she was too old for him when I saw her.  'Gene's only a
kid.  He's taken it hard, you can tell by looking at him how
miserable he is.  He's going to get sick if he keeps on at this
rate.  He's thin as a bone.  He hardly eats a bite. 
People get run down like that and catch the first disease that comes
along--"

Her melancholy whine
continued as Jake's stealthy thigh fumbled against her.  She
kept her arms carefully folded across her sagging breasts.

In the gray darkness, the
boy turned his starved face on them.  His dirty clothes lapped
round his scarecrow body: his eyes burned like a cat's in the dark,
his hair fell over his forehead in a matted net.

"He'll git over it,"
said Jake Clapp, in a precise country drawl, streaked with a note of
bawdry.  "Every boy has got to go through the Calf-Love
stage.  When I was about 'Gene's age--"  He pressed
his hard thigh gently against Florry, grinning widely and thinly with
a few gold teeth.  He was a tall solid man, with a hard precise
face, lewdly decorous, and slanting Mongol eyes.  His head was
bald and knobby.

"He'd better watch
out," whined Florry sadly.  "I know what I'm talking
about.  That boy's not strong--he has no business to go prowling
around to all hours the way he does.  He's on the verge of--"

Eugene rocked gently on
his feet, staring at the boarders with a steady hate.  Suddenly
he snarled like a wild beast, and started down the porch, unable to
speak, reeling, but snarling again and again his choking and insane
fury.

"Miss Brown"
meanwhile sat primly at the end of the porch, a little apart from the
others.  From the dark sun-parlor at the side came swiftly the
tall elegant figure of Miss Irene Mallard, twenty-eight, of Tampa,
Florida.  She caught him at the step edge, and pulled him round
sharply, gripping his arms lightly with her cool long fingers.

"Where are you
going, 'Gene?" she said quietly.  Her eyes of light violet
were a little tired.  There was a faint exquisite perfume of
rosewater.

"Leave me alone!"
he muttered.

"You can't go on
like this," she said in a low tone.  "She's not worth
it--none of them are.  Pull yourself together."

"Leave me alone!"
he said furiously.  "I know what I'm doing!"  He
wrenched away violently, and leaped down into the yard, plunging
around the house in a staggering run.

"Ben!" said
Irene Mallard sharply.

Ben rose from the dark
porch-swing where he had been sitting with Mrs. Pert.

"See if you can't do
something to stop him," said Irene Mallard.

"He's crazy,"
Ben muttered.  "Which way did he go?"

"By there--around
the house.  Go quick!"

Ben went swiftly down the
shallow steps and loped back over the lawn.  The yard sloped
sharply down: the gaunt back of Dixieland was propped upon a dozen
rotting columns of whitewashed brick, fourteen feet high.  In
the dim light, by one of these slender piers, already mined with
crumbling ruins of wet brick, the scarecrow crouched, toiling with
the thin grapevine of his arms against the temple.

"I will kill you,
House," he gasped.  "Vile and accursed House, I will
tear you down.  I will bring you down upon the whores and
boarders.  I will wreck you, House."

Another convulsion of his
shoulders brought down a sprinkling rain of dust and rubble.

"I will make you
fall down on all the people in you, House," he said.

"Fool!" cried
Ben, leaping upon him, "what are you trying to do?" He
caught the boy's arms from behind and dragged him back.  "Do
you think you can bring her back to you by wrecking the house? 
Are there no other women in the world, that you should let one get
the best of you like this?"

"Let me go! 
Let me go!" said Eugene.  "What does it matter to
you?"

"Don't think, fool,
that I care," said Ben fiercely.  "You're hurting no
one but yourself.  Do you think you'll hurt the boarders by
pulling the house down on your own head?  Do you think, idiot,
that any one cares if you kill yourself?"  He shook the
boy.  "No. No.  I don't care what you do, you know. 
I simply want to save the family the trouble and expense of burying
you."

With a great cry of rage
and bafflement Eugene tried to free himself.  But the older
brother held on as desperately as the Old Man of the Sea.  Then,
with a great effort of his hands and shoulders, the boy lifted his
captor off the ground, and dashed him back against the white brick
wall of the cellar.  Ben collapsed, releasing him, with a fit of
dry coughing, holding his hand against his thin breast.

"Don't be a fool,"
he gasped.

"Did I hurt you?"
said Eugene dully.

"No.  Go into
the house and wash yourself.  You ought to comb your hair once
or twice a week, you know.  You can't go around like a wild
man.  Get something to eat.  Have you any money?"

"Yes--I have
enough."

"Are you all right
now?"

"Yes--don't talk
about it, please."

"I don't want to
talk about it, fool.  I want you to learn a little sense,"
said Ben.  He straightened, brushing his whitened coat.  In
a moment, he went on quietly:  "To hell with them, 'Gene. 
To hell with them all.  Don't let them worry you.  Get all
that you can. Don't give a damn for anything.  Nothing gives a
damn for you.  To hell with it all!  To hell with it! 
There are a lot of bad days. There are a lot of good ones. 
You'll forget.  There are a lot of days.  Let it go."

"Yes," said
Eugene wearily, "let it go.  It's all right now.  I'm
too tired.  When you get tired you don't care, do you?  I'm
too tired to care.  I'll never care any more.  I'm too
tired.  The men in France get tired and don't care.  If a
man came and pointed a gun at me now, I wouldn't be scared.  I'm
too tired."  He began to laugh, loosely, with a sense of
delicious relief.  "I don't care for any one or anything. 
I've always been afraid of everything, but when I got tired I didn't
care.  That's how I shall get over everything.  I shall get
tired."

Ben lighted a cigarette.

"That's better,"
he said.  "Let's get something to eat."  He
smiled thinly.  "Come along, Samson."

They walked out slowly
around the house.
 
 

He washed himself, and
ate a hearty meal.  The boarders finished, and wandered off into
the darkness variously--some to the band-concert on the Square, some
to the moving-pictures, some for walks through the town.  When
he had fed he went out on the porch.  It was dark and almost
empty save where, at the side, Mrs. Selborne sat in the swing with a
wealthy lumber man from Tennessee.  Her low rich laughter
bubbled up softly from the vat of the dark.  "Miss Brown"
rocked quietly and decorously by herself.  She was a heavily
built and quietly dressed woman of thirty-nine years, touched with
that slightly comic primness--that careful gentility--that marks the
conduct of the prostitute incognito.  She was being very
refined.  She was a perfect lady and would, if aroused, assert
the fact.

"Miss Brown"
lived, she said, in Indianapolis.  She was not ugly: her face
was simply permeated with the implacable dullness of the
Mid-Westerner.  In spite of the lewdness of her wide thin mouth,
her look was smug.  She had a fair mass of indifferent brown
hair, rather small brown eyes, and a smooth russet skin.

"Pshaw!" said
Eliza.  "I don't believe her name's 'Miss Brown' any more
than mine is."
 
 

There had been rain. 
The night was cool and black; the flower-bed before the house was
wet, with a smell of geraniums and drenched pansies.  He lighted
a cigarette, sitting upon the rail.  "Miss Brown"
rocked.

"It's turned off
cool," she said.  "That little bit of rain has done a
lot of good, hasn't it?"

"Yes, it was hot,"
he said.  "I hate hot weather."

"I can't stand it
either," she said.  "That's why I go away every
summer.  Out my way we catch it.  You folks here don't know
what hot weather is."

"You're from
Milwaukee, aren't you?"

"Indianapolis."

"I knew it was
somewhere out there.  Is it a big place?" he asked
curiously.

"Yes.  You
could put Altamont in one corner of it and never miss it."

"How big is it?"
he said eagerly.  "How many people have you there?"

"I don't know
exactly--over three hundred thousand with the suburbs."

He reflected with greedy
satisfaction.

"Is it pretty? 
Are there a lot of pretty houses and fine buildings?"

"Yes--I think so,"
she said reflectively.  "It's a nice homelike place."

"What are the people
like?  What do they do?  Are they rich?"

"Why--yes. 
It's a business and manufacturing place.  There are a lot of
rich people."

"I suppose they live
in big houses and ride around in big cars, eh?" he demanded. 
Then, without waiting for a reply, he went on: "Do they have
good things to eat?  What?"

She laughed awkwardly,
puzzled and confused.

"Why, yes. 
There's a great deal of German cooking.  Do you like German
cooking?"

"Beer!" he
muttered lusciously.  "Beer--eh?  You make it out
there?"

"Yes." 
She laughed, with a voluptuous note in her voice.  "I
believe you're a bad boy, Eugene."

"And what about the
theatres and libraries?  You have lots of shows, don't you?"

"Yes.  A lot of
good shows come to Indianapolis.  All the big hits in New York
and Chicago."

"And a library--you
have a big one, eh?"

"Yes.  We have
a nice library."

"How many books has
it?"

"Oh, I can't say as
to that.  But it's a good big library."

"Over 100,000 books,
do you suppose?  They wouldn't have half a million, would
they?"  He did not wait for an answer, he was talking to
himself.  "No, of course not.  How many books can you
take out at a time?  What?"

The great shadow of his
hunger bent over her; he rushed out of himself, devouring her with
his questions.

"What are the girls
like?  Are they blonde or brunette?  What?"

"Why, we have both
kinds--more dark than fair, I should say."  She looked
through the darkness at him, grinning.

"Are they pretty?"

"Well!  I can't
say.  You'll have to draw your own conclusions, Eugene. 
I'm one of them, you know."  She looked at him with demure
lewdness, offering herself for inspection.  Then, with a laugh
of teasing reproof, she said:  "I believe you're a bad boy,
Eugene.  I believe you're a bad boy."

He lighted another
cigarette feverishly.

"I'd give anything
for a smoke," muttered "Miss Brown."  "I
don't suppose I could here?"  She looked round her.

"Why not?" he
said impatiently.  "There's no one to see you.  It's
dark.  What does it matter anyway?"