The Web and The Root (11 page)

How had man been begotten? Why, they had got him between brutish snores at some random waking of their lust in the midwatches of the night! They had got him in a dirty corner back behind a door in the hideous unprivacy of these rickety wooden houses, begotten, him standing in a fearful secrecy between apprehensive whisperings to make haste, lest some of the children hear! They had got him in some bestial sudden wakening of lust and hunger while turnip greens boiled with their humid fragrance on the stove! He had been begotten in some casual and forgotten moment which they had snatched out of their lives of filth, poverty, weariness, and labor, even as a beast will tear at chunks of meat; begotten in the crude, sudden, straddling gripe of half-rape on the impulsion of a casual opportunity of lust; begotten instantly as they were flung back rudely on the edge of an untidy bed in the red waning light of some forgotten Saturday when work was done, the week’s wages given, the week’s brief breathing space of rest,
repose, and brutal dalliance come! He had been begotten without love, without beauty, tenderness, magic, or any nobleness of spirit, by the idiot, blind hunger of lust so vile that it knew no loathing for filth, stench, foulness, haggish ugliness, and asked for nothing better than a bag of guts in which to empty out the accumulations of its brutish energies.

The thought of it was not to be endured, and suddenly the boy cranes his neck, he grips his throat hard with his fingers, he squirms like something caught in a steel trap, a bestial grimace contracts his features—it is like drowning, drowning, not to be endured. The congress of their foul and bloody names—the loathsome company of these Iras, Docks and Reeses, the Jeters, Zebs and Greeleys of these poor-white slums—return to torment memory now with the white sear of horrible and instant recognition. Why? Because these people are the mountain people. These people are the poor-white litter of the hills. These people—Oh! it is intolerable, but true—these people came out of his mother’s world, her life! He hears lost voices in the mountains long ago! They return to him from depths of sourceless memory, from places he has never viewed, from scenes that he has never visited—the whole deposit of inheritance, the lives and voices of lost people in the hills a hundred years ago.

They were a sharp-distinguished and strong-fibered people of his mother’s stock, a race eccentric, powerful, thoughtful, honest, energetic—much better than this brutish and degraded kind. They were a race that lived upon the mountain slopes and river bottoms of old wild and rugged Zebulon; a kind that mined for mica in the hills, and hewed for tan-bark on the mountains; a kind that lived along a brawling mountain stream, and tilled the good land of the bottoms. It was a kind apart from these, hard-bitten in its pride, and hard-assured in its complacence, scornful in its own superiority, conceited, individual, strongly marked—but kinsman of this kind, as well.

He hears lost voices of his kinsmen in the mountains one hundred years before—and all as sad, faint, and remote as far-faint voices in a
valley, all passing sad as a cloud shadow passing in the wilderness, all lonely, lost, and sad as strange, lost time. All hill-remote and lonely they come to him—the complacent, drawling voices of the death-triumphant Joyners long ago!

The vision changes, and again he sees the scar and squalor of the white-trash slum, the hill-man’s rickets come to town—and it is night; there is a shrew’s cry from the inner depth and darkness of some nameless house, lit only by the greasy, murky, and uneven light of a single lamp. It comes from scream and shout and curse, from drunken cry and stamping boot, from rancid flesh, fat pork, and rotting cabbage, and from his memory of a foul, sallow slut, gap-toothed, gaunt and shapeless as a pole—who stands there at the border of the rotting porch, her wisp of lank, unwashed hair screwed to a knot upon her head, proposing her pregnant belly for the fourteenth time.

Drowning! Drowning! Not to be endured! The abominable memory shrivels, shrinks, and withers up his heart in the cold constriction of its fear and loathing. The boy clutches at his throat, cranes with a livid face at the edges of his collar, draws one hand sharply up, and lifts his foot as if he has received a sudden, agonizing blow upon the kidneys. Less than his mother’s stock he knows, far less in sense, mind, will, energy, and character—they yet have come from the same wilderness, the same darkness, the same nature from which his mother’s people came—and their mark is on him, never to be changed—their taint is in him, never to be drawn out. Bone of their bone, blood of their blood, flesh of their flesh, by however various and remote a web, he is of them, they are in him, he is theirs—has seen, known, felt, and has distilled into his blood every wild passion, criminal desire, and rending lust they have known. And the blood of the murdered men, the rivers of blood of the murdered men which has soaked down quietly in the wilderness, which has soaked quietly away with all its million mute and secret tongues into the stern, the beautiful, the unyielding substance of the everlasting earth, is his, has stained his life, his flesh, his spirit, and is on his head as well as theirs!

And suddenly, like a man who is drowning and feels a rock beneath his feet; like a man lost, dying, freezing, famished, almost spent in the dark and howling desolation of the strange wilderness, who sees a light, comes suddenly upon a place of shelter, warmth, salvation, the boy’s spirit turns and seizes on the image of his father. The image of his father’s life, that image of decent order, gaunt cleanliness and dispatch, the image of warmth, abundance, passionate energy and joy. returns to the boy now with all that is beautiful and right in it, to save him, to heal him instantly, to restore him from the horror and abomination of that memory in which his spirit for a moment drowned.

And at the moment that he sees the huge salvation of his father’s figure, he also sees his father’s house, his life, the whole world that he has made and shaped with his own single power, his unique color, his one soul. And instantly he sees as well his father’s country, the land from which his father came, the beautiful, rich country which the boy has never seen with his own eyes, but which he has visited ten thousand times with his heart, his mind, until that country is as much a part of him as if he had been born there. It is the unknown land which all of us have known and have longed to find in youth. It is the undiscovered complement of all that we have seen and known, the lost half of our dark heart, the secret hunger, need, and magic working in our blood; and though we have not seen it, we recognize it instantly as the land we know the minute that we come to it.

And now, like an image of certitude, peace, joy, security, and abundance to restore his life out of the filth and shambles of that other vision, he sees his father’s land. He sees the great red barns, the tidy houses, the thrift, the comfort, and the loveliness, the velvet pastures, meadows, fields, and orchards, the red-bronze soil, the nobly-swelling earth of southern Pennsylvania. And at the moment that he sees it, his spirit comes out of the brutal wilderness, his heart is whole and sound and full of hope again. There are new lands.

And at the same moment he sees the image of the brave companionship of Nebraska Crane. What is there to fear? What is there to fear
on earth if Nebraska Crane is there? Nebraska stands there in his life like the image of that heroic integrity in life which cannot be touched or conquered, which is outside a man, and to which his own life must be united if he will be saved. So what is there to fear as long as Nebraska Crane—the free, the frank, the friendly, the fierce, the secret, and the unafraid—is there to show him with his life where he can go? What boys who live out on the West Side, for all their manners, customs, looks, and ways, for all their names and cunning stratagems, can he fear, as long as Nebraska Crane is there with him?

No—though they stood there massed against him in the whole concert of their hateful qualities, all the Sidneys, Roys, Carls, Victors, Guys, and Harrys of the earth—though he had to meet them on their own earth of red waning March and Sunday afternoons, what nameless and accursed horror can quench utterly the fearless light, the dark integrity of that fierce and lonely flame? He could breathe in their poisonous and lifeless air, stand houseless, naked, unprepared beneath their desolate skies—he could yet endure, meet them, beat them, carry the victorious power of his own world in his own life, and make exultant joy, all-conquering certitude, triumphant sense, and lusty love prevail forever above the wretchedness and scornful doubt of their own life-denying lives—if only Nebraska Crane were there to see him do it!

So the old wild joy of three o’clock has risen in his heart again—wordless, tongueless as a savage cry, with all its passion, pain, and ecstasy—and he sees the world, the East, the West, the lands and cities of the earth in triumph, for Nebraska Crane is there!

G
EORGE
W
EBBER AND
Nebraska Crane! The splendid names flash in the sun, soar to the westward, wing together over the roof of the whole world, together back again, are there!

George Webber! George Josiah and Josiah George! Josiah George Nebraska Webber and Crane George!

“My name is George Josiah Webber!” cried the boy, and sprang
erect.

“GEORGE JOSIAH WEBBER!”

The great name flashed then through the shining air; flashed, too, the great name to the flashing of the leaves; all of the maple leaves a-spangle with the proud flash of the great, proud name!

“GEORGE JOSIAH WEBBER!” cried the boy again; and all the gold-proud afternoon was ringing with the sound; flashed, too, the aspen leaves, and flashed the honeysuckle hedge a-tremble; flashed, too, and bent each blade of velvet grass.

“My name is George Josiah Webber!”

Flashed the proud name to the brazen pounding of the courthouse bell; flashed, too, and rose and struck upon the ponderous, solemn strokes of three!

“ONE!…TWO!…THREE!”

And then upon the stroke the black boys came:

“Hi, Paul!…Hey, Paul!…How are you, Paul?” the black boys cried and flashed before him.

“My name is George Josiah Webber!” cried the boy.

Solemnly, in perfect line, the black boys wheeled, swept round platoon-wise, faultless in formation, and with spin-humming wheels rode slowly back in lines of eight, squads-righted perfectly, and, halting on their wheels in perfect order, with grave inquiry greeted him:

“How’s ole Paul today?”

“My name,” the boy said firmly, “is not Paul! My name is George!”

“Oh, no, it’s not, Paul!” cried the black boys, grinning amiably. “Yo’ name is
Paul
!”

It was a harmless mockery, some unknown and unknowledgeable jest, some secret, playful banter of their nigger soul. God knows what they meant by it. They could not have said themselves what made them call him by this name, but Paul he was to them, and every day at three o’clock, before the markets opened up again, the black boys came and flashed before him—called him “
Paul
.”

And he contended stubbornly, would not give in, always insisted that his name was George, and somehow—God knows how!—the unyielding argument filled his heart with warmth, and delighted the black boys, too.

Each day at three o’clock he knew that they would come and call him “Paul.” each day at three o’clock he waited for them, with warmth, with joy, with longing and affection, with a strange sense of ecstasy and magic, with fear they might not come. But each day at three o’clock, hard on the market’s opening and the booming of the courthouse bell, the black boys came and flashed before him.

He knew that they would come. He knew they could not fail him. He knew that he delighted them, that they adored the look of him—the long-armed, big-handed, and flat-footed look of him. He knew that all his words and movements—his leaps and springs, his argument and stern insistence on his proper name—gave them an innocent and enormous pleasure. He knew, in short, that there was nothing but warm liking in their banter when they called him “Paul.”

Each day, therefore, he waited on their coming—and they always came! They could not have failed him, they would have come if all hell had divided them. A little before three o’clock, each day of the week except Sundays, the black boys roused themselves from their siesta in the warm sun round the walls of the City Market, saying:

“It’s time to go and see ole Paul!”

They roused themselves out of the pleasant reek of cod-heads rotting in the sun, decaying cabbage leaves and rotten oranges; they roused themselves from drowsy places in the sun, delicious apathy, from the depth and dark of all their African somnolence—and said:

“We got to go now! Ole Paul is waitin’ for us! Stay with us, footses; we is on ouah way!”

And what a way it was! Oh, what a splendid, soaring, flashing, winglike way! They came like streaks of ebon lightning; they came like ravens with a swallow-swoop; they came like shot out of a gun, and like a thunderbolt; they came like demons—but they came!

He heard them coming from afar, he heard them racing down the street, he heard the furious thrum of all their flashing wheels, and then they flashed before him, they were there! They shot past, eight abreast, bent over, pedaling like black demons; they shot past on their flashing wheels, the fibrous market baskets rattling lightly; and as they flashed before him, they cried “Paul!”

Then, wheeling solemnly in squadrons, they rode slowly, gravely back, and wheeled and faced him, steady and moveless on their wheels, and said, “Hi, Paul!…How’s ole Paul today!”

Then the parade began. They did amazing things, performed astounding evolutions on their wheels; they flashed by in fours, and then by twos; they did squads-right, retreated or advanced in echelon, swooped past in single file like soaring birds, rode like demons soaring in the wind.

Then madness seized them, and desire for individual excellence, a lust for championship, wild inventiveness, whimsical caprice. They shouted with rich nigger laughter, howled derisory comments at their fellows, strove to outdo one another—to win applause and approbation—all for Paul! They swooped down the street with lightlike swiftness and a bullet speed; they swooped down in terrific spirals, snaking from one side to the other, missing curbs by hair-line fractions of an inch; they shot past, stooping like a cowboy from the saddle, and snatching up their ragged caps as they shot past. They shouted out to one another things like these: