Thomas Wolfe, page 427
Well, he gave me a mighty funny look. “Why, what do you mean?” he said, “Lawrence isn’t here. He’s not with me.” “Yes, he is,” I said. “I know he’s there. I’m sure of it. And you can tell him so, and to come on in.” “Why, how do you know he’s there?” he said, worried, “What makes you so sure of it?” “Well, I tell you,” I said, “I was warned about it, Ed. I knew that you were both coming.” “Warned?” he said, beginning to get excited, you know, “Why, who warned you? Has any one been here? How did any one know?” he said. “No,” I said, “you needn’t get excited, Ed. Some one was here to warn me, all right, that you and Lawrence were coming, but it’s no one you’ve got to be afraid of in this world. The next world is a different matter, of course,” I said, “I can’t tell you about that. You’ll have to face that for yourself.” Well, he looked at me and his eyes were sticking out of his head. “Spirits?” he said. “Yes,” I said, “that’s what they were, all right! Now I don’t know who they were, but they came here to warn me, whisperin’ in my ear, and they said you and Lawrence were on your way and would be here in twenty minutes.”
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Well, his face was a study, and at last he said: “No, Delia, you’re wrong. I don’t want to alarm you,” he said, “but if they were here they came here to warn you about something else. It wasn’t me and Lawrence,” he said, “I’ll swear to that!” “Why, what do you mean?” I said. “I’ve told you,” he said, “Lawrence isn’t with me. We parted company outside the jail; we decided that was best and he lit out towards South Carolina. I’m going across the mountain,” he said, “and if we get away we hope to meet again out West.” “You look me in the eye,” I said, “are you telling me the truth?” Well, he looked straight at me: “Yes,” he said, “so help me God, it’s true!”
Well, I looked at him and I saw, of course, that he was telling me the truth. “Well,” I said, “it was something else, then, what it is I don’t yet know, but I’ll find out. Now,” I said, “why did you come here to my house? What do you want?” I said. “Why,” he said, “Delia, I’ve got to get away across those mountains tonight, and I’ve got no shoes, I’m barefooted,” he said. And then, of course, I saw, I reckon I’d been too excited to notice before, but there he was, ragged and bleeding, in his bare feet and let me tell you he was a sight to behold and marvel at: here he was with no shoes and no coat and nothing to wear but an old ragged pair of pants that looked as if he’d been sleeping in them all the time he’d been in jail, and a dirty old flannel shirt that had been all ripped out beneath the shoulder, and here his hair was all matted and tangled up like a bird’s nest, hanging down over his eyes and he must have had a six weeks’ growth of beard upon his face—why it looked as if he hadn’t had a shave or haircut since he went to jail, the very sight of him was enough to scare the life out of a grizzly bear. Why, as I told your papa later, they’d thought of everything to help him make his getaway except the things he needed most: here they’d given him a pistol and cartridges to kill people with—as if he hadn’t killed enough already—but they didn’t have sense enough to give him shoes to walk in or a coat to keep him warm. “If that don’t beat all I ever heard of!” I told your papa.
“I’ve got to get them somehow,” he said. “If I don’t I’ll cut my feet to pieces going across the mountains and then,” he said, “if I can’t walk, I’m done for. They’ll catch me sure.” “Why, of course,” I said. “Well,” he said, “that’s why I came here to see you, Delia. I knew you wouldn’t give me up and I could depend on you to help me. Now,” he says, “you can see for yourself I’ve got an awful big foot and the only man I know,” he says, “who wears a shoe that would fit me is Mr. Hawke. Now if you’ll only let me have a pair of his old shoes—anything you’ve got—I’ll pay you for them. I’ve got plenty of money,” he said, and he pulled out a big roll of bills, he had certainly come well heeled, “and I’ll pay you anything you say they’re worth.” “No, Ed,” I shook my head, “I don’t want your money”—of course, I couldn’t have touched it, it’d been like taking blood-money—“but I’ll give you the shoes.” So I went to the closet and got them out, a fine new pair, sir, that your daddy had bought only a couple of months before, in good condition, for he certainly took good care of all his clothes. “Here they are,” I said, “and I hope you’ll be able to use them.” Well, he put them on then and there, and they fitted him, sir, as if they’d been made for him. Well, you know, murderer that he was, he showed he still had feeling left in him, he took my hand and began to cry, says: “I’ll never forget what you’ve done as long as I live. If there’s ever anything I can do to pay you for it,” he says, “I’ll do it.” “Well, you can do something,” I said, “and you can do it here and now.” “What is it?” he said. “I don’t want your money,” I said, “I wouldn’t touch it. You can have the shoes, Ed, and I hope they help you to escape—you need the shoes,” I said, “but you don’t need that pistol you’re carryin’ in your hip pocket.” I could see it, you know, making a big bulge when he walked. “Now you’ve shed enough blood already,” I said, “and come what may, whether you escape or not, I never want to hear that you’ve shed another drop of blood. You give that gun to me,” I said, “and go on. If they catch you it won’t do you any good.”
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Well, he looked at me a moment as if he couldn’t make up his mind, and then he gave it to me. “All right,” he said, “I reckon you’re right. I don’t suppose it’d do me much good noway and besides, if they do catch me I don’t care. I’ve committed so many crimes in my life,” he said, “that I don’t care what happens to me now. I’d just as soon be out of it,” he said. “No,” I said, “I don’t like to hear you talk like that. You’ve got a wife who’s stuck by you through thick and thin and little childern, and now,” I said, “you must begin to think of them. Go on off some-wheres,” I said, “where no one knows you and make a fresh start, and when you are ready, send for her and I know her,” I said—I looked him in the eye—“I know her, and she’ll come.”
Well, it was too much for him. He couldn’t speak, he turned his head away, said, “All right. I’ll try!” “Now, you go on,” I said. “I don’t want them to find you here,” I said, “and I hope that all goes well with you.” “Goodbye,” he said, “I’m going to try to lead a different life hereafter.” “Yes, that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to try to atone for all the harm you’ve done. Go,” I said, “and sin no more.”
Well, he went. I heard the fence wires creak and I saw him going up the street, I reckon towards the mountain. He got away, all right. I never saw him again.
Well, he hadn’t been gone ten minutes when here he came, you know, your daddy, all excited with the news he thought he had to tell.
“Well,” he said, “they got away, all five of them. Hensley and a big mob have smashed the windows of Black’s hardware store to get guns and he’s out after them now with a posse.”
“Yes,” I said, “and you had to run all the way to town to find that out, didn’t you? The next time you go chasing off like that bring me back something I don’t know about.” “Why,” he said, “how did you hear? Do you know about it?” he said. “Know about it!” I said, “why I know more about it than you’ll ever know,” I said. “I got my information at first hand,” I said, “and I didn’t have to stir out of this house to get it, either.” “Why,” he says, “how was that? What do you mean?” “I’ve had a caller since you went away,” I said. “Who was it?” he says. I looked at him, “Ed Mears was here,” I said. “Good God!” your papa says, “do you mean to tell me that murderer was here—in my house? Have you given the alarm?” he says, “have you told the neighbors?” “No,” I said. “Well, I’m going to,” he says, “this very minute.” And he started to go again. I stopped him. “No,” I said, “you’ll do no such thing. You’ll stay here. Now, I gave him my promise not to give him away, and we’re going to stick to it. You keep quiet.” He studied about it for a moment. “Well,” he said, “I reckon you’re right. Maybe it’s the best way, after all. But that’s the strangest thing I ever heard about,” he said. “By God it is!”
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Well, they got away, all right. None of them were ever caught. Of course, years later when your daddy made that trip to California Truman told him that both Ed and Lawrence had come to his house in Colorado when he was living there and, of course, the girls both follered them within six months or so. Lawrence’s wife, who was Mary Truman, died out there in Colorado of consumption a year or two later, and I don’t know for certain what ever became of Lawrence. The story went that he settled down in Kansas and got married again and had a big family of childern and is living there right now, sir, a well-to-do man and highly respected in his community.
Of course, we know what happened to Ed Mears. I got the whole story from Dock Hensley. Truman told your papa that Ed had come out there to Colorado and went up into the mountains to some mining camp to work, and, of course, when he was ready he sent for Addie, and she follered him. Well, Truman said, she lived with him up there a year or so and then she came down to her father’s house again. Oh! he told it, you know! Said it was awful, she couldn’t stand no more of it, said Ed was going crazy and would go out of his mind sometimes screaming and raving that the spirits of the dead men he had killed had come back from the grave to haunt and torment him. “You see, don’t you,” I said to your papa when he told it, “you see what happens, don’t you? I’ve never known it to fail,” I said. “The guilty fleeth when no man pursueth.” “Yes,” he said, “that’s it. A guilty conscience as sure as you’re born,” he said. “So I took her away from him,” said Truman. “I sent her back East where she would never see him any more. Of course,” he said, “he threatened me—he threatened my life, but I could see that the man was goin’ crazy, and I wouldn’t let her go back to him,” he said.
Well, Addie came home again and got a divorce: of course, Cash Jeter took the case for her—that was long before he got elected to the Senate, he was nothing but a practising attorney at the time—and the story goes, in the course of the proceedings he fell in love with her, and marries her, if you please, within a month’s time after she got the final papers. “Well, they didn’t wait long, did they?” I said to your papa! “Now it does seem to me,” I said, “that they might have waited a decent length of time.” “Ah, Lord!” your papa says, “the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. ’Twas thrift Horatio with a vengeance,” he says. “That’s so,” I said, “that’s what it was, all right.”
Well, then, they sent Dock Hensley West to get a man who’d killed some one, and, of course, when he came back he told it how he had run into Ed Mears in Mexico. Said he was on a boat somewheres going from Texas into Mexico follerin’ on the trail of this murderer he’d been sent to get, I reckon, when here he saw him, face to face—Ed Mears. Dock said he’d grown a beard, but said he’d recognized him, “but I want to tell you,” he says, “he’s changed a lot. He’s not the same man that you knew,” he says. Dock said he looked like a dead man, said he was nothing but a shadder of his former self. “Why,” he said, “he was only a bundle of skin and bone, he didn’t have no more meat on him than a squirrel,” he says. “Well,” I said, “did he know you? Did he speak to you?”—of course, you know, I wanted to hear the story. “Why, Lord, yes!” Hensley said. “We roomed together for four days down there, hail-fellow-well-met and boon companions,” he says. Then, he went on to say, you know, “Of course,” he says, “when he first saw me on the boat he thought that I had come for him, he stepped right up,” he said, “to surrender himself.” “All right, Dock,” he says, “I know you came down here to take me back and,” he says, “I’m ready to go.” “Why, no, Ed,” I says, “you’re wrong. I’m here for some one else. You’re not the man I’m lookin’ for,” I said, “I don’t want you—and besides,” I said, “even if I did I’ve got no authority to arrest you, I’ve got no warrant for you.” “Well,” he said, “I’m comin’ back anyway some day. I’ve one more killing to do yet before I die,” he said, “and then they can take me and do what they like with me.” “Why, who’s that?” Dock says—asks him, “who do you want to kill?” he says. “Cash Jeter,” he says. And then Dock told it how bitter he hated him for getting the divorce and marrying his wife.
So Dock said that before he left for home again Ed handed him a letter and asked him to deliver it to Jeter when he got back—and he said he saw that letter with his own eyes, mind you, and that in all his life he never read the like of it: “I may have been a murderer,” Ed wrote, “and I’ve got many a crime upon my soul to atone for but in all my days I have never sunk so low as to steal a man’s wife away from him. Now,” he said, “you can set your house in order and get ready for me because I’m coming back. It may be a month, or it may be a year, or it may be ten years, but I’ll be there,” he said. “I’ve got a score to settle with you, and you get ready.” Well, Dock said when he handed that letter to Jeter he opened it and read it and Dock said his face turned pale and you could see him tremble and I suppose, of course, his life was hell on earth from that day on until the news got back to them that Ed was dead—because, of course, Ed never lived to get there, the story went that he got killed in a saloon in Mexico. But you can rest assured that he’d a come.
Well, that’s the way it was, all right: that’s just what happened.
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But still and all—the thing was puzzlin’ me, you know—“Two . . . Two,” and “Twenty . . . Twenty”—what could it mean?
“Why, Lord,” your papa said, “it didn’t mean a thing! It never happened anyway,” he said, “it’s something you imagined.”
“You wait,” I said, “you wait and see.”
It wasn’t long. We didn’t have long to wait.
It started in along some time before dinner, about one o’clock. Oh, Lord! it felt like something had tore loose inside me. And he was there, he’d come home early, here he was, you know, out in the backyard rendering the lard out of some hogs he’d bought. “Why, what on earth!” I cried. “What ever made you buy them?” Child, child! that awful waste, that awful extravagance! Why, as I told him, if it hadn’t been for me he’d have spent every penny he earned featherin’ the nests of the butchers and the farmers and the saloon keepers—he couldn’t resist ’em, you know. “Why, man alive!” I said, “what ever persuaded you to go and do a thing like that!” Here we were with hams and bacon in the pantry that he’d bought, six smoked hams, if you please, and here he comes with this whole hog. “Why, man, you’ll kill us all with all this hog meat!” I said—yes! with lots of chickens of our own and a twelve-pound roast he’d sent down from the market—“Why, we’ll get down sick,” I said, “you’ll have the childern all in bed! So much meat isn’t good for people.” To think of it! the waste, you know—child, child, many’s the time I’ve sat down and cried about it, to think he’d go and squander away his money in that way. “Why, Lord!” I said, “I never saw such a glutton in my life!” I thought I’d appeal to his pride, you know. “Why, all you think of is your belly! Now stop here and consider for a moment: how do you ever expect to accumulate any property if everything you earn goes rolling down your gullet to feed your gut? Why, I’ll vow! man! I believe all of your brains are in your belly!” Why, yes! he’d meet up with some old farmer who had a whole wagon load of stuff he wanted to get rid of so he could get out of town and hike for home again, and he’d buy him out, sir. Why, didn’t I tell you! What about it! to think that he could be such a dunce—the time he sent this man home with forty dozen eggs—Lord! I could have thrown them at him I was so aggervated!—when here we had hens of our own layin’ us fresh ones every day as hard as they could. “Why, what ever prompted you to do such a trick as that?” I said. “Well,” he says, sheepish-like, “he let me have the lot at seven cents a dozen. It was such a bargain,” he says, “it seemed a pity not to buy them.” “Why I don’t care,” I said, “if he let you have them for two cents a dozen, it was money thrown away,” I said, “we’ll never use them.” “Oh, we can use them,” he said. “We’ll give ’em to the childern.” “Why, Lord, man, how you talk!” I said, “you’ll get the childern so sick of eggs they’ll never look one in the face again. They’ll never eat ’em,” I said, “they’ll all go bad!” And he looked pretty sheepish about it, I tell you what he did! “Well,” he says, “I thought I was actin’ for the best. I guess I was mistaken,” he said.
And yes! Didn’t he come home one time with a whole load of cantaloupes and watermelons—twenty-seven watermelons, if you please, and the Lord knows how many cantaloupes, hundreds of ’em, I reckon. “To think you had no better sense than that!” I said. “Oh, we’ll eat ’em, we’ll eat ’em,” he said. “The childern will eat ’em up,” he says. Yes, didn’t Lee get down sick from eating them, “and there’s a doctor bill to pay,” I told him . . . and all the other times he’d come with wagon loads of roastin’ ears and termaters and string beans and sweet pertaters and onions and radishes and beets and turnips and all kinds of garden vegetables and all sorts of fruit, peaches and pears and apples and plums, when here we had a big orchard and garden right behind the house growin’ everything we needed. Why, it kept me busy thinkin’ up ways to keep it all from goin’ to waste, said, “how do you ever expect me to look after the childern if you keep dumping this stuff in here on me?”—here I was in that condition, you know, putting up preserves for all I was worth and him out there rendering the lard out. Oh! the smell of it, that old strong smell of fat, you know—right up to the very time, four hundred and thirty-seven jars of preserved cherries, peaches, apple, grape, and plum jelly, quince honey, preserved pears, termater ketchup, chow chow, pickled cucumbers, and all such stuff as that, why you couldn’t get into the pantry, it was stacked up to the ceiling, and let me tell you, now, he could eat: now I’ve seen some good eaters in my day and time but I’ve never seen any one who could poke it away the way he could. I reckon he got it from that crowd he came from up there, told it you know how they’d come in from the fields in his boyhood and sit down to a meal that would stall an ox. Why didn’t I see the old woman myself when we were up there that time eat a whole chicken and three big hunks of pie—says to Augusta, you know, “Daughter, fill my plate again,” she says, and she was in her seventies then—that’s exactly how she got her death, sir. “To think of it!” I said when I heard the news—in her ninety-sixth year and fell out of her chair and broke her leg while reachin’ for an ear of corn: of course it killed her, she was too old to recover from the injury, her bones wouldn’t knit together again, “but if that don’t beat all!” I said.
