OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe
have learned the causes for each of those conditions. I mean that we have learned how to check them, how to control them. I mean that so far as we are concerned they don’t EXIST any more!” His voice had become almost shrill with the force of his persuasive argument, and suddenly whipping a sheaf of envelopes, tied with a rubber band, out of his inner pocket, and gripping a stub of pencil in his stubby hand, he crossed his short fat legs with an energetic movement, bent forward poised above the envelopes, and said quietly but urgently:
“See here, now! — I’d like to show you a few figures! My business, as you know, is to look after other people’s money — your money, the town’s money, everybody’s money — I’ve got to keep my fingers on the pulse of business at every moment of the day — my business is to KNOW— to KNOW— and let me tell you something,” he said quietly, looking directly in their eyes, “I DO know — so pay attention just a moment while I show these figures to you.”
And for some moments he spoke quietly, persuasively, his dark features packed with an energy of powerful conviction, while he rapidly jotted figures down upon the backs of the soiled envelopes, and they bent around him — their medicine-man of magic numerals — in an attitude of awed and rapt attentiveness. And when he had finished, there was silence for a moment, save for the rhythmic clack of wheels, the rocketing sound of the great train. Then one of the men, stroking his chin thoughtfully, and with an impressed air, said:
“I see. . . . And you think, then, that in view of these conditions it would be better for the country if Harding is elected.”
The little man’s manner became instantly cautious, non-committal, “conservative”:
“I don’t say that,” he said, shaking his head in a movement of denial —“I only say that whoever gets elected we’re in for a period of unparalleled development. . . . Now both of them are good men — as I say, I shall probably vote for Cox — but you can rest assured,” he spoke deliberately and looked around him in his compelling way — “you can rest assured that no matter which one gets elected the country will be in good hands. There’s no question about that.”
“Yes, sir,” said the florid-faced politician in his amiable and hearty way. “I agree with you. . . . I’m a Democrat myself, both in practice and in principle. I’m going to vote for Cox, but if Harding gets elected I won’t shed any tears over his election. We’ll have to give the Republicans credit for a good deed this time — they couldn’t have made a wiser or a better decision. He has a long and honourable career in the service of his country,”— as he spoke his voice unconsciously took on the sententious ring and lilt of the professional politician —“no breath of scandal has ever touched his name: in public and in private life he has remained as he began — a statesman loyal to the institutions of his country, a husband devoted to his family life, a plain American of simple tastes who loves his neighbours as himself, and prefers the quiet life of a little town, the democracy of the front porch, to the marble arches of the Capitol — so, whatever the result may be,” the orator concluded, “this nation need fear nothing: it has chosen well and wisely in both cases, its future is secure.”
Mr. Flood, during the course of this impassioned flight, had remained ponderously unmoved. In the pause that followed, he sat impassively, his coarse-jowled face and bulging yellowed eyes fixed on the orator in their customary expression of comic stupefaction. Now, breathing hoarsely and stertorously, he coughed chokingly and with an alarming rattling noise into his handkerchief, peered intently at his wadded handkerchief for a moment, and then said coarsely:
“Hell! What all of you are saying is that you are goin’ to vote for Cox but that you hope that Harding wins.”
“No, now, Jim —” the politician, Mr. Candler, said in a protesting tone —“I never said —”
“Yes, you did!” Mr. Flood wheezed bluntly. “You meant it, anyhow, every one of you is sayin’ how he always was a Democrat and what a great man Wilson is, and how he’s goin’ to vote for Cox — and every God-damn one of you is praying that the other feller gets elected. . . . Why? I’ll tell you why,” he wheezed coarsely, “— it’s because we’re sick an’ tired of Woodrow, all of us — we want to put the rollers under him an’ see the last of him! Oh, yes, we are,” he went on brutally as some one started to protest —“we’re tired of Woodrow’s flowery speeches, an’ we’re tired of hearin’ about wars an’ ideals an’ democracy an’ how fine an’ noble we all are an’ ‘Mister won’t you please subscribe?’ We’re tired of hearin’ bunk that doesn’t pay an’ we want to hear some bunk that does — an’ we’re goin’ to vote for the crook that gives it to us. . . . Do you know what we all want — what we’re lookin’ for?” he demanded, glowering brutally around at them. “We want a piece of the breast with lots of gravy — an’ the boy that promises us the most is the one we’re for! . . . Cox! Hell! All of you know Cox has no more chance of getting in than a snowball has in hell. When they get through with him he won’t know whether he was run over by a five-ton truck or chewed up in a sausage mill. . . . Nothing has changed, the world’s no different, we’re just the same as we always were — and I’ve watched ’em come an’ go for forty years — Blaine, Cleveland, Taft, McKinley, Roosevelt — the whole damned lot of ’em-an’ what we want from them is just the same: all we can get for ourselves, a free grab with no holts barred, and to hell with the other fellow.”
“So whom are you going to vote for, Jim?” said Mr. Candler smiling.
“Who? Me?” said Mr. Flood with a coarse grin. “Why, hell, you ought to know that without asking. Me — I’m a Democrat, ain’t I? — don’t I publish a Democratic newspaper? I’m going to vote for Cox, of course.”
And, in the burst of laughter that followed, some one could be heard saying jestingly:
“And who’s going to win the Series, Jim? Some one told me you’re for Brooklyn!”
“Brooklyn!” Mr. Flood jeered wheezingly. “Brooklyn has just the same kind of chance Cox has — the chance a snowball has in hell! Brooklyn! They’re in just the same fix the Democrats are in- they’ve got nothing on the ball. When Speaker and that Cleveland gang get through with them, Brooklyn is going to look just like Cox the day after the election. Brooklyn,” he concluded with brutal conviction, “hasn’t got a chance.”
And again the debate between the men grew eager, animated and vociferous: they shouted, laughed, denied, debated, jeered good-naturedly, and the great train hurtled onward in the darkness, and the everlasting earth was still.
And other men, and other voices, words, and moments such as these would come, would pass, would vanish and would be forgotten in the huge record and abyss of time. And the great trains of America would hurtle on through darkness over the lonely, everlasting earth — the earth which only was eternal — and on which our fathers and our brothers had wandered, their lives so brief, so lonely, and so strange — into whose substance at length they all would be compacted. And the great trains would hurtle on for ever over the silent and eternal earth — fixed in that design of everlasting stillness and unceasing change. The trains would hurtle onward bearing other lives like these, all brought together for an instant between two points of time — and then all lost, all vanished, broken and forgotten. The trains would bear them onward to their million destinations — each to the fortune, fame, or happiness he wished, whatever it was that he was looking for — but whether any to a sure success, a certain purpose, or the thing he sought — what man could say? All that he knew was that these men, these words, this moment would vanish, be forgotten — and that great wheels would hurtle on for ever. And the earth be still.
Mr. Flood shifted his gouty weight carefully with a movement of his fat arm, grunting painfully as he did so. This delicate operation completed, he stared sharply and intently at the boy again and at length said bluntly:
“You’re one of those Gant boys, ain’t you? Ain’t you Ben’s brother?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered. “That’s right.”
“Which one are you?” Mr. Flood said with this same