Thomas Wolfe, page 113
“Why, what on earth has got into you, boy!” his mother cried out fretfully. “Why, you’re actin’ like a regular simpleton, I’ll vow you are!”
“Whah! Whah!” Luke cried exultantly.
“Now, I don’t know where it comes from,” said his mother judicially, with a deliberate and meditative sarcasm, as if she were seriously considering the origin of his lunacy. “There’s one thing sure: you never got it from me. Now, all my people had their wits about them—now, say what you please,” she went on in a thoughtful tone, as she stared with puckered mouth into the fire, “I never heard of a weak-minded one in the whole crowd——”
“Whah—whah!” he cried.
“—So you didn’t get it from any of my people,” she went on with deliberate and telling force—“no, you didn’t!” she said.
“Whah-h!” he prodded her in the ribs again, and then immediately, and in a very earnest tone, he said:
“W-w-w-wy, I was just f-f-f-finkin’ it would be a good idea if we all w-w-w-went for a little ride. F-f-f-frankly, I fink it would do us good,” he said, looking at Eugene with a very earnest look in his restless and tormented eyes. “I fink we need it! F-f-f-frankly, I fink we do,” he said, and then added abruptly and eagerly as he thrust his clumsy fingers through his hair: “W-w-w-wy, what do you say?”
“Why, yes!” his mother responded with an instant alacrity as she got up from her chair. “That’s the very thing! A little breath of fresh air is just the thing we need—as the feller says,” she said, turning to Eugene now and beginning to laugh slyly, and with pleasure, passing one finger shyly underneath her broad red nose-wing as she spoke—, “as the feller says, it costs nothin’ and it’s Nature’s sovereign remedy, good for man and good for beast!—So let’s all get out into the light of open day again,” she said with rhetorical deliberation, “and breathe in God’s fresh air like He intended we should do—for there’s one thing sure,” his mother went on in tones of solemn warning, which seemed directed to a vast unseen audience of the universe rather than to themselves, “there’s one thing sure—you can’t violate the laws of God or nature,” she said decisively, “or you’ll pay for it—as sure as you’re born. As sure as you’re born,” she whispered. “Why, yes, now!”—she went on, with a start of recollective memory—“Here now!—Say!—Didn’t I see it—wasn’t I readin’—Why, here, you know, the other day,” she went on impatiently, as if the subject of these obscure broken references must instantly be clear to every one—“why, it was in the paper, you know—this article written by Doctor Royal S. Copeland,” his mother said, nodding her head with deliberate satisfaction over his name, and pronouncing the full title sonorously with the obvious satisfaction that titles and distinctions always gave her—“that’s who it was all right, sayin’ that fresh air was the thing that every one must have, and that all of us should take good care to——”
“Now, M-m-m-m-mama,” said Luke, who had paid no attention at all to what she had been saying, but had stood there during all the time she was speaking, breathing his large, weary, and unhappy breath, thrusting his clumsy fingers through his hair, as his harassed and tormented eyes flickered restlessly about the room in a driven but unseeing stare:—“Now, M-m-m-mama!” he said in a tone of exasperated and frenzied impatience, “if we’re g-g-g-going we’ve g-g-g-got to get started! N-n-n-now I d-d-don’t mean next W-w-w-w-Wednesday,” he snarled, with exasperated sarcasm, “I d-d-d-don’t m-m-m-mean the firteenth of next July. But—now—now—now,” he muttered crazily, coming to her with his large hands lifted like claws, the fingers working, and with a look of fiendish madness in his eyes.
“Now!” he whispered hoarsely. “This week! Today! This afternoon! A-a-a-a-at once!” he barked suddenly, jumping at her comically, then thrusting his hand through his hair again, he said in a weary and exasperated voice:
“M-m-m-mama, will you please get ready! I b-b-b-beg of you. I beseech you—please!” he said, in tortured entreaty.
“All right! All right!” his mother replied instantly in a tone of the heartiest and most conciliatory agreement. “I’ll be ready in five minutes! I’ll just go back here and put on a coat over this old dress—so folks won’t see me,” she laughed shyly, “an’ I’ll be ready before you know it!—Pshaw, boy!” she now said in a rather nettled tone, as if the afterthought of his impatience had angered her a little, “now you don’t need to worry about my being ready,” she said, “because when the time comes—I’ll be there!” she said, with the loose, deliberate, man-like gesture of her right hand and in tones of telling deliberation. “Now you worry about yourself!” she said. “For I’ll be ready before you are—yes, and I’m never late for an appointment, either,” she said strongly, “and that’s more than you can say—for I’ve seen you miss ’em time an’ time again.”
During all this time Luke had been thrusting his fingers through his hair, breathing heavily and unhappily, and pawing and muttering over a mass of thumbed envelopes and papers which were covered with the undecipherable scrawls and jottings of his nervous hand: “T-t-t-Tuesday,” he muttered, “Tuesday . . . Tuesday in Blackstone—B-b-b-b-Blackstone—Blackstone—Blackstone, South Car’lina,” he muttered in a confused and distracted manner, as if these names were completely meaningless to him, and he had never heard them before. “Now—ah!” he suddenly sang out in a rich tenor voice, as he lifted his hand, thrust his fingers through his hair, and stared wildly ahead of him—“meet Livermore in Blackstone Tuesday morning—see p-p-p-p-prospect in G-g-g-g-Gadsby Tuesday afternoon about—about—about—Wheet!”—here he whistled sharply, as he always did when hung upon a word—“about a new set of batteries for his Model X—Style 37—lighting system—which the cheap p-p-p-penny-pinching South Car’lina bastard w-w-w-wants for nothing—Wednesday m-m-m-morning b-b-b-back to Blackstone—F’ursday . . . w-w-w-wy,” he muttered pawing clumsily and confusedly at his envelopes with a demented glare—“F-f-f-f-f’ursday—you—ah—j-j-j-jump over to C-c-c-Cavendish to t-t-t-try to persuade that ignorant red-faced nigger-Baptist son-of-a-bitch that it’s f-f-f-for his own b-b-b-best interests to scrap the-the-w-w-w-wy the d-d-d-decrepit pile of junk he’s been using since S-s-s-Sherman marched through Georgia and b-b-b-buy the new X50 model T Style 46 transmission——
“M-m-m-mama!” he cried suddenly, turning toward her with a movement of frenzied and exasperated entreaty. “Will you please kindly have the g-g-g-goodness and the m-m-m-mercy to do me the favor to b-b-b-begin to commence—w-w-w-w-wy—to start—to make up your mind—to get ready,” he snarled bitterly. “W-w-w-w-wy sometime before midnight—I b-b-b-beg of you . . . I beseech you . . . I ask it of you p-p-p-please, for my sake—for all our sakes—for God’s sake!” he cried with frenzied and maddened desperation.
“All right! All right!” his mother cried hastily in a placating and reassuring tone beginning to move with an awkward, distracted, bridling movement that got her nowhere, since there were two doors to the parlor and she was trying to go out both of them at the same time. “All right!” she said decisively, at length getting started toward the door nearest her. “I’ll just go back there an’ slip on a coat—and I’ll be with you in a jiffy!” she said with comforting assurance.
“If you please!” Luke said with an ironic and tormented obsequiousness of entreaty, as he fumbled through his mass of envelopes. “If you please! W-w-w-wy I’d certainly be m-m-m-m-much obliged to you if you would!” he said.
At this moment, however, a car halted at the curb outside, some one got out, and in a moment more they could hear Helen’s voice, as she came towards the house, calling back to her husband in tones of exasperated annoyance:
“All right, Hugh! All right! I’m coming!”—although she was really going toward the house. “Will you kindly leave me alone for just a moment! Good heavens! Will I never get a little peace? All right! All right! I’m coming! For God’s sake, leave me alone for just five minutes, or you’ll drive me crazy!” she stormed, and with a high-cracked note of frenzied strain and exasperation that was almost like hysteria.
“All right, Mr. Barton,” she now said to her husband in a more good-humored tone. “Now you just hold your horses for a minute and I’ll come on out. The house is not going to burn down before we get there.”
His lean, seamed, devoted face broke into a slow, almost unwilling grin, in which somehow all of the submission, loyalty and goodness of his soul was legible, and Helen turned, came up on the porch, opened the hall door, and came into the parlor where they were, beginning to speak immediately in a tone of frenzied and tortured exacerbation of the nerves and with her large, gaunt, liberal features strained to the breaking point of nervous hysteria.
“My God!” she said in a tone of weary exasperation. “If I don’t get away from them soon I’m going to lose my mind! . . . From the moment that I get up in the morning I never get a moment’s peace! Some one’s after me all day long from morn to night! Why, good heavens, Mama!” she cried out in a tone of desperate fury, and as if Eliza had contradicted something she had said, “I’ve got troubles enough of my own, without any one else putting theirs on me! Have they got no one else they can go to? Haven’t they got homes of their own to look after? Do I have to bear the burden of it all for every one all my life?” she stormed in a voice that was so hoarse, strained and exasperated now that she was almost weeping. “Do I have to be the goat all my life? Oh, I want a little peace,” she cried desperately. “I just want to be left alone by myself once in a while!—The rest of you don’t have to worry!” she said accusingly. “You don’t have to stand for it. You can get away from it!” she cried. “You don’t know—you don’t know!” she said furiously, “what I put up with—but if I don’t get away from it soon, I’m going all to pieces.”
During all the time that Helen had been pouring out her tirade of the wrongs and injuries that had been inflicted on her, Luke had acted as a kind of dutiful and obsequious chorus, punctuating all the places where she had to pause to pant for breath, with such remarks as——
“W-w-w-w-well, you d-d-do too much for every one and they don’t appreciate it—that’s the trouble,” or, “I f-f-f-f-fink I’d tell them all to p-p-p-p-politely step to hell—f-f-frankly I fink you owe it to yourself to do it! W-w-w-wy you’ll only w-w-w-wear yourself out doing for others and in the end you d-d-d-don’t get so m-m-m-much as one good Goddamn for all your trouble! F-f-f-frankly, I mean it!” he would say with a very earnest look on his harassed and drawn face. “W-w-w-wy hereafter I’d let ’em g-g-g-g-go to hell!”
—“If they’d only show a little appreciation once in a while I wouldn’t mind so much,” she panted. “But do you think they care? Do you think it ever occurs to them to lift a hand to help me when they see me working my fingers to the bone for them? Why,” and here her big-boned generous face worked convulsively, “if I should work myself to death for them, do you think any of them would even so much as send a bunch of flowers to the funeral?”
Luke laughed with jeering scorn: “W-w-w-wy,” he said, “it is to laugh! It is to laugh! They w-w-wouldn’t send a G-g-g-g-God-damn thing—n-n-n-not even a ten-cent b-b-b-bunch of-of-w-w-w-w-wy—of turnip-greens!” he said.
“All right! All right!” Helen again cried furiously through the door, as Barton sounded a long imperative blast of protest and impatience on his horn. “All right, Hugh! I’m coming! Good heavens, can’t you leave me in peace for just five minutes! . . . Hugh, please! Please!” she stormed in a tone of frenzied exasperation as he sourly answered her. “Give me a little time alone, I beg of you—or I’ll go mad!”—And she turned to them again, panting and with the racked and strained expression of hysteria on her big-boned features. In a moment, her harassed and driven look relaxed somewhat, and the big rough bawdy smile began to shape itself again around the corners of her generous mouth.
“My God, Mama,” she said in a tone of quiet and weary despair, but with this faint lewd smile about her mouth and growing deeper as she spoke, “what am I going to do about it? Will you please tell me that? Did you have to put up with that when you and Papa were together? Is that the way it is? Is there no such thing as peace and privacy in this world? Now, I’d like to know. When you marry one of them, does that mean that you’ll never get a moment’s peace or privacy alone as long as you live? Now, there are some things you like to do alone”—she said, and by this time the lewd smile had deepened perceptibly around her mouth. “Why, it’s got so,” she said, “that I’m almost afraid to go to the bath-room anymore——”
“Whew-w!” shrieked Eliza, laughing, putting one finger underneath her nose.
“Yes, sir,” Helen said quietly, with the lewd smile now deep and loose around her mouth. “I’ve just got so I’m almost afraid to go, I don’t know from one moment to the next whether one of them is going to come in and keep me company or not.”
“Whew!” Eliza cried. “Why, you’ll have to put up signs! ‘No Visitors Allowed!’—that’s exactly what you ought to say! I’d fix ’em! I’d do it like a shot,” she said.
Helen sniggered hoarsely, and absently began to pluck at her chin.
“But oh!” she said with a sigh. “If only they’d leave me alone an hour a day! If only I could get away for just an hour——”
“W-w-w-wy!” Luke began. “Why don’t you c-c-come with us! F-f-f-frankly, I fink you ought to do it! I fink the change would do you good,” he said.
“Why?” she said rather dully, yet curiously. “Where are you going?”
“W-w-w-wy,” he said, “we were just starting for a little ride. . . . Mama!” he burst out suddenly in a tone of exasperated entreaty—“Will you k-k-k-kindly go and get yourself ready? W-w-wy, its g-g-g-going to get d-d-d-dark before we get started,” he said bitterly, as if she had kept him waiting all this time. “Now, please—I b-b-b-beg of you—to g-g-g-get ready—wy-wy-wy without f-f-f-further delay—now, I ask it of you, for God’s sake!” he said, and then turning to Helen with a movement of utter exasperation and defeat, he shuddered convulsively, thrust his fingers through his hair, and moaned “Ah-h-h-h-h-h!” after which he began to mutter “My God! My God! My God!”
“All right, sir! All right!” Eliza said briskly, in a conciliating tone. “I’ll just go right back here and put my coat and hat on and I won’t keep you waitin’ five——”
“Wy, wy, wy. If you p-p-please, Mama,” said Luke with a tortured and ironic bow. “If you p-p-please.”
At length, they really did get out of the house and were assembled on the curb in the last throes of departure. Luke, breathing stertorously his large unhappy breath, began to walk about his battered little car, casting uneasy and worried looks at it and falling upon it violently from time to time, kicking it in the tires with his large flat feet, smiting it with a broad palm and seizing it by the sides and shaking it so savagely that its instant dissolution seemed inevitable. Meanwhile Eliza stood planted solidly, facing her house, her hands clasped loosely at the waist, and her powerful and delicate mouth pursed reflectively as she surveyed her property—a characteristic gesture that always marked every departure from the house and every return to it, in which the whole power and relish of possession was evident. As for Barton, while these inevitable ceremonies were taking place, he just sat in his car with a kind of sour resigned patience, and waited. And Helen, while this was going on, had taken Eugene by the arm and walked a few paces down the street with him, talking all the time in a broken and abstracted way, of which the reference could only be inferred:
“You see, don’t you? . . . You see what I’ve got to put up with, don’t you? . . . You only get it for a little while when you come here, but with me it’s all the time and all the time”—Suddenly she turned to him, looked him directly in the eye, and speaking quietly to him, but with a curious, brooding and disturbing inflection in her voice, she said:
“Do you know what day this is?”
“No.”
“Do you realize that Ben died five years ago this morning?—I was thinking of it yesterday when she was talking about getting that room ready for those people who are coming,” she muttered, and with a note of weary bitterness in her voice. For a moment her big-boned face was marked with the faint tension of hysteria, and her eyes looked dark and lustreless and strained as she plucked absently at her large chin. “But do you see how she can do it?” she went on in a low tone of brooding and weary resignation. “Do you understand how she can ever bear to go back in there? Do you see how she can rent that room out to any cheap roomer who comes along? Do you realize that she’s got the same bed in there he died on,” she said morbidly, “the same mattress?—K-k-k-k-k-k!” she laughed softly and huskily, poking at his ribs. “She’ll have you sleeping on it next”——
“I’ll be damned if she does!”
“K-k-k-k-k-k-k!”
“Do you think I could be sleeping on it now!” Eugene said with a feeling of black horror and dread around his heart.
“K-k-k-k-k-k!” she snickered. “Would you like that? Would you sleep better if you knew it was? . . . No,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “Uh-uh. I don’t think so. It’s still up there in the same room. She may have painted the bed, but otherwise I don’t think she’s changed a thing. Have you ever been back up there since he died?” she said curiously.
“My God, no! Have you?”
She shook her head: “Not I,” she said with weary finality. “I’ve never even been up-stairs since that morning. . . . Hugh hates the place,” she muttered, looking towards him. “He doesn’t even like to stop and wait for me. He won’t come in.”
Then she was silent for a moment as they looked at the gaunt ugly bay of the room upstairs where Ben had died. In the yard the maple trees were thinning rapidly; the leaves were sere and yellow and were floating to the ground. And the old house stood there in all its ugly, harsh, and prognathous bleakness, its paint of rusty yellow scaling from it in patches, and weathered and dilapidated as Eugene had never seen it before, but incredibly near, incredibly natural and familiar, so that all its ghosts of pain and grief and bitterness, its memories of joy and magic and lost time, the thousand histories of all the vanished people it had sheltered, whom all of them had known, revived instantly with an intolerable and dream-like strangeness and familiarity.
