The Web and The Root (4 page)

“Good day dar, Mistah Webbah. How’s Mistah Webbah today?”

The big dog swayed and panted like an engine, his great tongue lolling out; he came on with great head down and with the great black brisket and his shoulders working.

Something happened suddenly, filling that quiet street with instant menace, injecting terror in the calm pulse of the boy. Around the corner of the Potterham house across the street came Potterham’s bulldog. He saw the mastiff, paused; his forelegs widened stockily, his grim-jowled face seemed to sink right down between the shoulder blades, his lips bared back along his long-fanged tusks, and from his baleful red-shot eyes fierce lightning shone. A low snarl rattled in the folds of his thick throat, the mastiff swung his ponderous head back and growled, the bull came on, halted, leaning forward on his widened legs, filled with hell-fire, solid with fight.

And Carlton Leathergood’s pock-marked yellow negro man winked at the boy and shook his head with cheerful confidence, saying:

“He ain’t goin’ to mix up wid
my
dawg, Mistah Webbah!…No, sah!…He knows bettah dan dat!…Yes, sah!” cried Leathergood’s nigger with unbounded confidence. “He knows too well fo’
dat
!”

The pock-marked nigger was mistaken! Something happened like a flash: there was a sudden snarl, a black thunderbolt shot through the air, the shine of murderous fanged teeth. Before the mastiff knew what had happened to him, the little bull was in and had his fierce teeth buried, sunk, gripped with the lock of death, in the great throat of the larger dog.

What happened after that was hard to follow. For a moment the great dog stood stock still with an eloquence of stunned surprise and bewildered consternation that was more than human; then a savage roar burst out upon the quiet air, filling the street with its gigantic anger. The mastiff swung his great head savagely, the little bull went
flying through the air but hung on with imbedded teeth; great drops of bright arterial blood went flying everywhere across the pavement, and still the bull held on. The end came like a lightning stroke. The great head flashed over through the air and down: the bull, no longer dog now—just a wad of black—smacked to the pavement with a sickening crunch.

From Potterham’s house a screen door slammed, and fourteen-year-old Augustus Potterham, with his wild red hair aflame, came out upon the run. Up the street, paunch-bellied, stiff-legged, and slouchy-uniformed, bound for town and three o’clock, Mr. Matthews, the policeman, pounded heavily. But Leathergood’s nigger was already there, tugging furiously at the leather collar around the mastiff’s neck, and uttering imprecations.

But it was all too late. The little dog was dead the moment that he struck the pavement—back broken, most of his bones broken, too; in Mr. Matthews’ words, “He never knowed what hit him.” And the big dog came away quietly enough, now that the thing was done: beneath the negro’s wrenching tug upon his neck, he swung back slowly, panting, throat dripping blood in a slow rain, bedewing the street beneath him with the bright red flakes.

Suddenly, like a miracle, the quiet street was full of people. They came from all directions, from everywhere: they pressed around in an excited circle, all trying to talk at once, each with his own story, everyone debating, explaining, giving his own version. In Potterham’s house, the screen door slammed again, and Mr. Potterham came running out at his funny little bandylegged stride, his little red apple-cheeks aglow with anger, indignation, and excitement, his funny, chirping little voice heard plainly over all the softer, deeper, heavier, more Southern tones. No longer the great gentleman now, no longer the noble descendant of the Dukes of Potterham, no longer the blood-cousin of belted lords and earls, the possible claimant of enormous titles and estates in Gloucestershire when the present reigning head should die—but Cockney Potterham now, little Potterham minus all his aitches, little
Potterham the dealer in nigger real estate and the owner of the nigger shacks, indomitable little Potterham forgetting all his grammar in the heat and anger of the moment:

“’Ere now! Wot did I tell you? I always said ’is bloody dog would make trouble! ’Ere!
Look
at ’im now! The girt bleedin’, blinkin’ thing! Big as a helefant, ’e is! Wot chance ud a dog like mine ’
ave
against a brute like that! ’E ought to be put out of the way—that’s wot! You mark my words—you let that brute run loose, an’ there won’t be a dog left in town—that’s wot!”

And Leathergood’s big pock-marked nigger, still clutching to the mastiff’s collar as he talks, and pleading with the policeman almost tearfully:

“Fo’ de Lawd, Mistah Matthews, my dawg didn’t do
nuffin
! No, sah! He don’t bothah nobody—
my
dawg don’t! He wa’nt even noticin’ dat othah dawg—you ask
anybody
!—ask Mistah Webbah heah!”—suddenly appealing to the boy with pleading entreaty—“Ain’t dat right, Mistah Webbah? You saw de whole thing yo’se’f, didn’t you? You tell Mistah Matthews how it was! Me an’ my dawg was comin’ up de street, a-tendin’ to ouah business, I jus’ tu’ned my haid to say good-day to Mistah Webbah heah, when heah comes dis othah dawg aroun’ de house, jus’ a-puffin’ an’ asnawtin’, an’ befo’ I could say Jack Robinson he jumps all ovah my dawg an’ grabs him by de throat—you ask Mistah Webbah if dat ain’t de way it happened.”

And so it goes, everyone debating, arguing, agreeing, and denying, giving his own version and his own opinion; and Mr. Matthews asking questions and writing things down in a book; and poor Augustus Potterham blubbering like a baby, holding his dead little bulldog in his arms, his homely, freckled face contorted piteously, and dropping scalding tears upon his little dead dog; and the big mastiff panting, dripping blood upon the ground and looking curious, detached from the whole thing, and a little bored; and presently the excitement subsiding, people going away; Mr. Matthews telling the negro to appear in court; Augustus Potterham going away into the house blubbering, with the little
bulldog in his arms; Mr. Potterham behind him, still chirping loudly and excitedly; and the dejected, pock-marked nigger and his tremendous dog going away up the street, the big dog dropping big blood flakes on the pavement as he goes. And finally, silence as before, the quiet street again, the rustling of young maple leaves in the light wind, the brooding imminence of three o’clock, a few bright blood-flakes on the pavement, and all else the way that it had always been, and George Webber as before stretched out upon the grass beneath the tree there in his uncle’s yard, chin cupped in hands, adrift on time’s great dream, and thinking:

“Great God, this is the way things are, I see and know this is the way things are, I understand this is the way things are: and, Great God! Great God! this being just the way things are, how strange, and plain, and savage, sweet and cruel, lovely, terrible, and mysterious, and how unmistakable and familiar all things are!”

Three o’clock!

“C
HILD, CHILD
!—W
HERE ARE
you, child?”

So did he always know Aunt Maw was there!

“Son, son!—Where are you, son?”

Too far for finding and too near to seek!

“Boy, boy!—Where
is
that boy?”

Where
you
, at any rate, or any other of the apron-skirted kind, can never come.

“You can’t take your eye off him a minute….”

Keep eye
on
, then; it will do no good.

“The moment that your back is turned, he’s up and gone….”

And out and off and far away from
you
—no matter if your back is turned or not!

“I can never find him when I need him….”

Need me no needs, sweet dame; when I need you, you shall be so informed!

“But he can
eat
, all right…. He’s Johnny-on-the-spot when it is time to eat….”

And, pray, what is there so remarkable in
that
? Of course he
eats
—more power to his eating, too. Was Hercules a daffodil; did Adam toy with water cress; did Falstaff wax fat eating lettuces; was Dr. Johnson surfeited on shredded wheat; or Chaucer on a handful of parched corn? No! What is more, were campaigns fought and waged on empty bellies; was Kublai Khan a vegetarian; did Washington have prunes for breakfast, radishes for lunch; was John L. Sullivan the slave of Holland Rusk, or President Taft the easy prey of lady fingers? No! More—who drove the traffic of swift-thronging noon, perched high above the hauling rumps of horses; who sat above the pistoned wheels of furious day; who hurled a ribbon of steel rails into the West; who dug, drove through gulches, bored through tunnels; whose old gloved hands were gripped on the throttles; who bore the hammer, and who dealt the stroke?—did such of these grow faint with longing when they thought of the full gluttony of peanut-butter and ginger snaps? And finally, the men who came back from the town at twelve o’clock, their solid liquid tramp of leather on the streets of noon, the men of labor, sweat, and business coming down the street—his uncle, Mr. Potterham, Mr. Shepperton, Mr. Crane—were fence gates opened, screen doors slammed, and was there droning torpor and the full feeding silence of assuagement and repose—if these men had come to take a cup of coffee and a nap?

“He can
eat
, all right!…He’s always here when it is time to
eat
!”

It was to listen to such stuff as this that great men lived and suffered, and great horses bled! It was for this that Ajax battled, and Achilles died; it was for this that Homer sang and suffered—and Troy fell! It was for this that Artaxerxes led great armies, it was for this that Caesar took his legions over Gaul; for this that Ulysses had braved strange seas, encompassed perils of remote and magic coasts, survived the Cyclops and Charybdis, and surmounted all the famed enchantments of Circean time—to listen to such damned and dismal stuff as this—the astonishing discovery by a woman that men
eat
!

Peace, woman, to your bicker—hold your prosy tongue! Get back
into the world you know, and do the work for which you were intended; you intrude—go back, go back to all your kitchen scourings, your pots and pans, your plates and cups and saucers, your clothes and rags and soaps and sudsy water; go back, go back and leave us; we are fed and we are pleasantly distended, great thoughts possess us; drowsy dreams; we would lie alone and contemplate our navel—it is afternoon!

“Boy, boy!—Where has he got to now!…Oh, I could see him lookin’ round…. I saw him edgin’ towards the door!…Aha, I thought, he thinks he’s very smart…but I knew exactly what he planned to do…to slip out and to get away before I caught him…and just because he was afraid I had a little work for him to do!”

A
little
work! Aye. there’s the rub—if only it were not always just a
little
work we had to do! If only in their minds there ever were a moment of
supreme occasion
or
sublime event
! If only it were not always just a
little
thing they have in mind, a
little
work we had to do! If only there were something, just a spark of joy to lift the heart, a spark of magic to fire the spirit, a spark of understanding of the thing we
want
to do, a grain of feeling, or an atom of imagination! But always it is just a
little
work, a
little
thing we have to do!

Is it the little
labor
that she asks that we begrudge? Is it the little
effort
which it would require that we abhor? Is it the little
help
she asks for that we ungenerously withhold, a hate of work, a fear of sweat, a spirit of mean giving? No! It is not this at all. It is that women in the early afternoon are dull, and dully ask dull things of us; it is that women in the afternoon are dull, and ask us always for a
little
thing, and do not understand!

It is that at this hour of day we do not want them near us—we would be alone. They smell of kitchen steam and drabness at this time of day: the depressing moistures of defunctive greens, left-over cabbage, lukewarm boilings, and the dinner scraps. An atmosphere of sudsy water now pervades them; their hands drip rinsings and their lives are grey.

These people do not know it, out of mercy we have never told
them; but their lives lack interest at three o’clock—we do not want them, they must let us be.

They have some knowledge for the morning, some for afternoon, more for sunset, much for night; but at three o’clock they bore us, they must leave us be! They do not understand the thousand lights and weathers of the day as we; light is just light to them, and morning morning, and noon noon. They do not know the thing that comes and goes—the way light changes, and the way things shift; they do not know how brightness changes in the sun, and how man’s spirit changes like a flick of light. Oh, they do not know, they cannot understand, the life of life, the joy of joy, the grief of grief unutterable, the eternity of living in a moment, the thing that changes as light changes, as swift and passing as a swallow’s flight; they do not know the thing that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of Spring, the sharp and tongueless cry!

They do not understand the joy and horror of the day as
we
can feel it; they do not understand the thing we dread at this hour of the afternoon.

To them the light is light, the brief hour passing; their soaps-suds spirits do not contemplate the horror of hot light in afternoon. They do not understand our loathing of hot gardens, the way our spirits dull and sicken at hot light. They do not know how hope forsakes us, how joy flies away, when we look at the mottled torpor of hot light on the hydrangeas, the broad-leaved dullness of hot dock-weeds growing by the barn. They do not know the horror of old rusty cans filled into gaps of rubbish underneath the fence: the loathing of the mottled, hot, and torpid light upon a row of scraggly corn; the hopeless depth of torpid, dull depression which the sight of hot coarse grasses in the sun can rouse to a numb wakefulness of horror in our souls at three o’clock.