Thomas Wolfe, page 428
Why, I’ll vow! It’s a wonder his constitution stood it as long as it did—brains and eggs and bacon and fried steak and oatmeal and hot biscuits and sausage and two or three cups of coffee for his breakfast, and two or three different kinds of meat, liver and roast beef and pork and fish and chicken, and a half dozen different vegetables, beans and mashed pertaters and succotash and turnip greens and preserved peaches and pie, and all such as that, for dinner and supper. “Why,” I said to Wade Eliot, “I believe that’s what helped bring on this trouble. He’s been diggin’ his grave with his teeth.” “Well,” he said, “he’s been diggin’ a long time, hasn’t he?” and, of course, I had to admit it, but I’ll vow! I sometimes think he might be alive today if he’d only used more judgment!
Well, then, I say, it hit me, those awful stabbing pains. I went to the window and called out to him, “Come! come quick!” And let me tell you, he didn’t wait: he came a-running.
“Oh, it can’t be!” I said. “There hasn’t been time enough.”
“That’s what I think it is,” he said. “I’m going for the doctor.”
And he went.
—
That was the year the locusts came: it seems so long ago since the year that the locusts came, and all the earth was eaten bare, it seems so long ago. But no (I thought) the thing kept puzzlin’ me, you know—it can’t be that, there hasn’t been time enough for that, it was only the year before in January—Lord! Lord! I often think of all that I’ve been through, and wonder that I’m here to tell it. I reckon for a fact I had the power of Nature in me; why! no more trouble than the earth takes bearing corn, all of the childern, the eight who lived, and all the others that you never heard about—all of the childern and less married life than any woman that I knew—and Oh! to think of it, to think that he should say the things he did—cursin’ and tauntin’ me and runnin’ wild with other women when he had done it all, and like a devil when he saw what he had done. Lord! Lord! he was a strange man, a wild and savage man; sometimes it seemed I never got to know him: there was a devil in him somewhere, something wild and strange we never got to know about—the things he did and said were more than I could stand, they made me bitter and I prayed that God would punish him, but Lord! it was so long ago since the year that the locusts came, and I think of it all, the orange trees, the fig trees, and the singin’ and all of the times we knew together. Oh! the good, the bad times, all of the happiness and bitter weepin’, and there is something now that can’t be said, I tried to hate him but now I have no words to say against him: he was a strange man but where he was no one was ever cold, no one was ever hungry, there was enough for all, and now when I remember him it seems so long ago since the year when the locusts came, and there’s something that I want to say that can’t be spoken.
That year—it was the year the childern had the typhoid and Gil and Jenny were just gettin’ well again and I had taken them—Lord! how did I ever do it all alone—down to St. Augustine—and he came, he couldn’t stay, of course, he follered us, and began to drink—I tried to find it but he got Gil to hide it in the sand up underneath the house—and to curse and rave when he had seen me, says “Damn you! if you bring it back with you I’ll kill you both!” And child, to think that he should talk like that, it made me bitter and I didn’t stop to think: I walked the floor, I walked the floor and then I went out on the porch and leaned against a post—we were livin’ in a cottage that I’d rented from some Northern people—and there was no rail—there was nothin’ but that old loose sand there anyway, and I knew the childern wouldn’t hurt themselves if they fell off—and Lord! What shall I do! What shall I do! I thought. . . .
The next day he had sobered up again and was all right and so towards sunset of that day we took the childern with us and set out for old Fort Marion, the Spanish Fort, down by the Ponce de Leon, and here were all the people in their finery and the soldiers band a playin’ and then you heard the gun and the bugle blowin’ as the flag came down—yes—Toodle-oo! Toodle-oo!—that was the way the bugle blew and all the little childern put their hands up to their mouths to see if they could do it too, and the birds flyin’, the palm trees and the music and the smell of water and the orange blossoms, and that old black fort—why Lord! the walls were fourteen feet in places—with the sun goin’ down behind it like some big orange, and the people listenin’ to the music, in January of that year the locusts came at home, and then I felt as if the whole thing had tore loose inside me.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to go,” and says, “What is it?” “Oh, Lord!” I told him, “it’s tearing me in two. Oh, Lord! We’ll never get there! Come!”—and we went, the childern and all, and my feet slippin’ and sinkin’ in the sand, until I thought I’d never get there, and that great hunk of a thing tearing away at me, and he picked me up and carried me the last part of the way into the house, and I said, “You see, don’t you? You see what you’ve done. That’s your work!” and he was frightened and his face turned pale and he trembled as he looked and he said, “My God, My God! What have I done!” and he walked the floor, and it got dark, and I lay there, and all of the childern were asleep around me, and he went out into the yard, and we had a fig tree there, and I lay there in the dark listenin’ to people comin’ by, and I could hear music playin’ somewheres and hear their voices laughin’ and singin’, and smell all of the blossoms—Oh! the magnolias and the lilies and the roses, the poinsettias, and all the other flowers they had there and the orange trees and all, and the little childern sleepin’ in the house, you know, and see the sky all full of stars and Lord God! I thought, what shall I do, what shall I do?—and that was the year the locusts came at home and now it seems so long ago.
—
But Lord! I reckon Nelson got it right that time, said, “You’ve got the power of nature in you for a fact. I’ve never seen the like of it,” he said. Why, yes! didn’t I have them all, and couldn’t I make things grow by touchin’ them, and wasn’t it that way ever since I was a child—termaters and flowers and corn and vegetables—and all kinds of fruit. Why Lord! it seemed that all I had to do was stick my fingers in the earth and they’d come up for me. “Oh,” says old man Shumaker, workin’, you know to all hours in his garden till it looked like a checkerboard, everything standing up straight and neat without a weed among it like I reckon he’d been taught to do in Germany, says “Oh! you mustn’t let your garden go that way. You’ve got to weed it out or things will never grow.” “You wait,” I said, “you wait and see! They’ll grow,” I said, “they’ll grow for me, and I’ll have things as good as yours for all your work and grubbin’.” And didn’t I have onions and radishes and lettuce and termaters that beat him out of sight—why Lord! You could see them popping from the earth! and let me tell you, if the worst come to the worst, I wouldn’t starve, if I didn’t have a penny I could live, I’d make the earth perduce for me. I’ve done it and I could do it yet.
Why, yes! didn’t I go in to the Catawba Coal company here one day last winter to pay my bill and talk to him just two days before he dropped dead from that heart attack, and see him, you know, Miller Wright, not a day over seventy, pale as a ghost and trembling and shaking all over like a leaf? “Why, Miller,” I said, “it worries me to see you in this condition. What is it? What’s the matter?” “Oh,” he says, trembling and shaking, “Delia, it’s the worry, the awful worry! I can’t sleep no more for thinkin’ of it.” “Why, what is it?” I said; says, “Oh, Delia, everything I ever had is gone! I’m penniless. Most of it went in real estate,” he says, “and now that miserable bank has closed its doors. What am I going to do?” he said. “Do?” I said, “why you’re going to do the same as me—profit by your mistakes and start all over.” “Oh, but Delia, Delia,” he said, shakin’ his head at me, “it’s too late—we’re both past seventy and we’re too old, too old,” he said. “Old!” I said, “why, Lord God, I could start right out tomorrow and earn my living with the best of them.” “Yes,” he said, “but Delia, what are you going to do?” “Do!” I said, “why, I tell you,” I said, “I’m going to pitch right in and work hard till I’m eighty and then,” I says, winkin’ at him, you know, “I’m goin’ to cut loose and just raise hell,” I said—that’s exactly what I said, you know, I thought I’d jolly him up a bit and, of course, he had to laugh then, says, “Well, I reckon that’s as good a plan as any.” “Now, look here, Miller,” I said, “you ought to know better than to give in like this. We’ve both been through the mill, and we’ve seen some mighty rough times—why, these people that they’ve got today don’t know anything about it, they don’t know what hardship is”—why didn’t we both grow up within five miles of each other and don’t I remember it all, yes! every minute of it like it was today, the men marchin’, and the women cryin’, the way the dust rose, the times we went through and the way we had to work, the wool, the flax, the wheel, the things we grew and the things we had to make, and a thousand things you never dreamed or heard of, boy, the summertime, the river and the singin’, the poverty, the sorrow, and the pain—we saw and had to do it all—“And you!” I said to Miller Wright. “You! You did it, too,” I said, “and you remember!”
Well, he had to admit it then, you know, says, “Yes, you’re right, I remember. But,” he says—you know, he brightened up a bit, “could you do it now?” “Do it?” I said. “Why I could do it like a flash: Now, Miller,” I said, “suppose we did lose out. We’re in the boat with lots of others. We all thought we were doing the right thing and I reckon we lost our heads,” I said. “We allowed ourselves to be swept off our feet against our better judgment”—pshaw! when I think of it! I had my mind all made up . . . if I’d only known. . . . Why, I was just going to make another trade or two and then get out. Pshaw! I’ll vow, I believe if it hadn’t been for all these sharks and New York Jews and easy-money grafters that came in there over-night . . . that was the time I should have sold if I’d only had the sense to see it . . . and as for all that stuff we bought in Florida, I believe we’d have been all right today if that hurricane hadn’t come along and hit us like it did and then on top of it these lying villains out in California spread that story about the Mediterranean fruit fly down in Florida. Why, Lord, there was no more fruit fly there than at the North Pole—it was all part of a lying story they put out to ruin and injure Florida because they couldn’t stand to see us get ahead of them, and Hoover and all his crowd playin’ right along with them and abettin’ them in their villainy because he came from California, if you please—that’s all in the world it was, but Florida will come back in spite of all the lies they told about her, you can’t down Florida!—“And Miller,” I said, “the banks haven’t got everything,” I said, “they may think they have but now,” I said, winkin’ at him, “I’ve got a secret that I’m goin’ to tell you. I’ve still got a little patch of land out in the country that no one knows about and if the worst comes to the worst,” I said, “I won’t starve. I’ll go out there and grow my food and I’ll have plenty. And if you go broke you come on out,” I said. “You won’t go hungry, I can make things grow.” “Oh, but Delia,” he said, “it’s too late, too late. We’re both too old to start again, and we’ve lost everything.” “No,” I said, “not everything. There’s something left.” “What is it?” he said. “We’ve got the earth,” I said. “We’ve always got the earth. We’ll stand upon it and it will save us. It’s never gone back on nobody yet.”
Well, here they came, you know, tearing along for all they were worth, your papa and Old Doctor Nelson, I lay there with those awful pains rending me as if they were going to tear me in two.
“But no,” I said to Doctor Nelson. “It can’t be that. I’m not ready for it yet. It’s not been time, it’s two weeks before my time,” I said.
“No matter about that,” he said. “You’re ready. It’s your time,” he said. “It’s your time, sure enough.”
And, sure enough, it was. Why! that was it, of course!—that’s what I’ve been telling you, boy!—that explained it all.
“Two . . . Two,” the first voice said, and “Twenty . . . Twenty” said the other:—
Twenty days later from that evening that Ed Mears came there to our house, to the minute, at twenty minutes to ten o’clock on the seventeenth day of October, twins were born—Ed and Arthur were both born that night.
The next day as I lay there thinkin’, it flashed over me, the meaning of it, of course I saw it all. The mystery was explained.
And that’s the story, sir, that’s just the way it happened.
“Two . . . Two,” the first voice said, and “Twenty . . . Twenty,” said the other.
I’ve told you now.
“What do you think of that?” I said to Mr. Hawke. “You see, don’t you?”
His face was a study. “It’s pretty strange when you come to think of it,” he said. “By God it is!”
Lord, boy! What’s that I hear now on the harbor? Hah? What say? A ship!—Now it will soon be April, and I must be going home again: out in my garden where I work the early flowers and blossoms will be comin’ out, the peach trees and the cherry trees, the dogwood and the laurel and the lilacs. I have an apple tree and it is full of all the birds there are in June: the flower-tree you planted as a child is blooming by the window where you planted it. (My dear child, eat good food and watch and guard your health: it worries me to think of you alone with strangers.) The hills are beautiful and soon it will be spring once more. (It worries me to think of you like this alone and far away: child, child, come home again!)
O listen! . . .
Hah? What is it? . . .
Hah? What say? . . .
(Lord God! A race of wanderers!)
Child, child! . . . what is it?
Ships again!
[¬]
THE TRAIN AND THE CITY
[Scribner’s Magazine, May 1933]
Spring came that year like magic and like music and like song. One day its breath was in the air, a haunting premonition of its spirit filled the hearts of men with its transforming loveliness, wreaking its sudden and incredible sorcery upon gray streets, gray pavements, and on gray faceless tides of manswarm ciphers. It came like music faint and far, it came with triumph and a sound of singing in the air, with lutings of sweet bird-cries at the break of day and the high swift passing of a wing, and one day it was there upon the city streets with a strange and sudden cry of green, its sharp knife of wordless joy and pain.
“Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, the charm of earliest birds”—and that is the way the springtime came that year, and instantly this weary earth cast off the hag’s pelt of the harsh and barren winter: the earth burst into life with a thousand singing unities of joy, of magical and delicate hues and lights, shifting as strangely and as poignantly as all the thousand strange and subtle weathers of man’s heart and spirit, wreaking upon his soul the invisible mystery of its presence, its music of unrest and longing, its arrows of pain and joy, its thousand evanescent and impalpable griefs and glories, so strangely mixed of triumph and of singing, of passion, pride, and sorrow, love, and death.
A flame, a light, a glory, and a moth of light, a far lost cry, a triumph and a memory, a song, a paean and a prophecy, a moment lost forever and a word that would never die, a spurt of fire, a moment’s twist of passion and of ecstasy, a brevity of poignant days and a haunting wild sorrow and regret, a thorn, a cry, a triumph, and a wordless and intolerable grief for beauty that must die, for buried dust that trembled to the passing of a wheel, for rooted lip and bone and for the cages of the heart where welled the vine, a goading of hunger and desire that maddened the brain, twisted the flesh, and tore the heart asunder with its savage and incommunicable passion of ecstasy and grief—that was the way that springtime came that year, and nowhere on the earth did it come with greater glory than on the streets and pavements of the city.
Not the whole glory of the great plantation of the earth could have outdone the glory of the city streets that spring. Neither the cry of great green fields, nor the song of the hills, nor the glory of young birch trees bursting into life again along the banks of rivers, nor the oceans of bloom in the flowering orchards, the peach trees, the apple trees, the plum and cherry trees, all of the singing and the gold of spring, with April bursting from the earth in a million shouts of triumph, and the visible stride, the flowered feet of the springtime as it came on across the earth, could have surpassed the wordless and poignant glory of a single tree in a city street, that spring, the waking to life of the bird song in the morning.
Over the immense and furious encampment of the city there trembled the mighty pulsations of a unity of hope and joy, a music of triumph and enchantment that suddenly wove all life into the fabric of its exultant harmonies. It quelled the blind and brutal stupefaction of the streets, it pierced into a million cells, and fell upon ten thousand acts and moments of man’s life and business, it hovered above him in the air, it gleamed and sparkled in the flashing tides that girdled round the city, and with a wizard’s hand it drew forth from the tombs of winter the gray flesh of the living dead.
