Of Time and the River & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
huskily.
“You think you’re a pretty wise guy, don’t you?” said Steve heavily. “But I don’t notice it’s getting you anywhere.”
Ben turned his scowling eyes upon him, and sniffed sharply, unconsciously.
“Now, I hope you’re not going to forget your old friends, Mr. Rockefeller,” he said in his subdued, caressing ominous voice. “I’d like to be vice-president if the job’s still open.” He turned back to the keyboard — and searched with a hooked finger.
“All right, all right,” said Steve. “Go ahead and laugh, both of you, if you think it’s funny. But you notice that Little Stevie isn’t a fifteen-dollar clerk in a newspaper office, don’t you? And he doesn’t have to sing in moving-picture shows, either,” he added.
Helen’s big-boned face reddened angrily. She had begun to sing in public with the saddlemaker’s daughter.
“You’d better not talk, Steve, until you get a job and quit bumming around,” she said. “You’re a fine one to talk, hanging around pool-rooms and drug-stores all day on your wife’s money. Why, it’s absurd!” she said furiously.
“Oh for God’s sake!” Ben cried irritably, wheeling around. “What do you want to listen to him for? Can’t you see he’s crazy?”
As the summer lengthened, Steve began to drink heavily again. His decayed teeth, neglected for years, began to ache simultaneously: he was wild with pain and cheap whisky. He felt that Eliza and Margaret were in some way responsible for his woe — he sought them out day after day when they were alone, and screamed at them. He called them foul names and said they had poisoned his system.
In the early hours of morning, at two or three o’clock, he would waken, and walk through the house weeping and entreating release. Eliza would send him to Spaugh at the hotel or to McGuire, at his residence, in Eugene’s charge. The doctors, surly and half-awake, peeled back his shirtsleeve and drove a needle with morphine deep in his upper arm. After that, he found relief and sleep again.
One night, at the supper hour, he returned to Dixieland, holding his tortured jaws between his hands. He found Eliza bending over the spitting grease of the red-hot stove. He cursed her for bearing him, he cursed her for allowing him to have teeth, he cursed her for lack of sympathy, motherly love, human kindliness.
Her white face worked silently above the heat.
“Get out of here,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s that accursed licker that makes you so mean.” She began to weep, brushing at her broad red nose with her hand.
“I never thought I’d live to hear such talk from a son of mine,” she said. She held out her forefinger with the old powerful gesture.
“Now, I want to tell you,” she said, “I’m not going to put up with you any longer. If you don’t get out of here at once I’m going to call 38 and let them take you.” This was the police station. It awoke unpleasant memories. He had spent the day in jail on two similar occasions. He became more violent than before, screamed a vile name at her, and made a motion to strike her. At this moment, Luke entered; he was on his way to Gant’s.
The antagonism between the boy and his older brother was deep and deadly. It had lasted for years. Now, trembling with anger, Luke came to his mother’s defense.
“You m-m-m-miserable d-d-degenerate,” he stuttered, unconsciously falling into the swing of the Gantian rhetoric. “You ought to b-b-b-be horsewhipped.”
He was a well grown and muscular young fellow of nineteen years, but too sensitive to all the taboos of brotherhood to be prepared for the attack Steve made on him. Steve drove at him viciously, smashing drunkenly at his face with both hands. He was driven gasping and blinded across the kitchen.
Wrong forever on the throne.
Somewhere, through fear and fury, Eugene heard Ben’s voice humming unconcernedly, and the slow picked tune on the piano.
“Ben!” he screamed, dancing about and grasping a hammer.
Ben entered like a cat. Luke was bleeding warmly from the nose.
“Come on, come on, you big bastard,” said Steve, exalted by his success, throwing himself into a fancy boxing posture. “I’ll take you on now. You haven’t got a chance, Ben,” he continued, with elaborate pity. “You haven’t got a chance, boy. I’ll tear your head off with what I know.”
Ben scowled quietly at him for a moment while he pranced softly about, proposing his fists in Police Gazette attitudes. Then, exploding suddenly in maniacal anger, the quiet one sprang upon the amateur pugilist with one bound, and flattened him with a single blow of his fist. Steve’s head bounced upon the floor in a most comforting fashion. Eugene gave a loud shriek of ecstasy and danced about, insane with joy, while Ben, making little snarling noises in his throat, leaped on his brother’s prostrate body and thumped his bruised skull upon the boards. There was a beautiful thoroughness about his wakened anger — it never made inquiries till later.
“Good old Ben,” screamed Eugene, howling with insane laughter. “Good old Ben.”
Eliza, who had been calling out loudly for help, the police, and the interference of the general public, now succeeded, with Luke’s assistance, in checking Ben’s assault, and pulling him up from his dazed victim. She wept bitterly, her heart laden with pain and sadness, while Luke, forgetful of his bloody nose, sorrowful and full of shame only because brother had struck brother, assisted Steve to his feet and brushed him off.
A terrible shame started up in each of them — they were unable to meet one another’s gaze. Ben’s thin face was very white; he trembled violently and, catching sight of Steve’s bleared eyes for a moment, he made a retching noise in his throat, went over to the sink, and drank a glass of cold water.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Eliza wept.
Helen came in from town with a bag of warm bread and cakes.
“What’s the matter?” she said, noting at once all that had happened.
“I don’t know,” said Eliza, her face working, shaking her head for several moments before she spoke. “It seems that the judgment of God is against us. There’s been nothing but misery all my life. All I want is a little peace.” She wept softly, wiping her weak bleared eyes with the back of her hand.
“Well, forget about it,” said Helen quietly. Her voice was casual, weary, sad. “How do you feel, Steve?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t make any trouble for any one, Helen,” he said, with a maudlin whimper. “No! No!” he continued in a brooding voice. “They’ve never given Steve a chance. They’re all down on him. They jumped on me, Helen. My own brothers jumped on me, sick as I am, and beat me up. It’s all right. I’m going away somewhere and try to forget. Stevie doesn’t hold any grudge against any one. He’s not built that way. Give me your hand, buddy,” he said, turning to Ben with nauseous sentimentality and extending his yellow fingers, “I’m willing to shake your hand. You hit me to-night, but Steve’s willing to forget.”
“Oh my God,” said Ben, grasping his stomach. He leaned weakly across the sink and drank another glass of water.
“No. No.” Steve began again. “Stevie isn’t built —”
He would have continued indefinitely in this strain, but Helen checked him with weary finality.
“Well, forget about it,” she said, “all of you. Life’s too short.”
Life was. At these moments, after battle, after all the confusion, antagonism, and disorder of their lives had exploded in a moment of strife, they gained an hour of repose in which they saw themselves with sad tranquillity. They were like men who, driving forward desperately at some mirage, turn, for a moment, to see their footprints stretching interminably away across the waste land of the desert; or I should say, they were like those who have