Thomas Wolfe, page 497
It is the sea—the sea
It is the sea—the sea
The sea—the sea—the sea
The vision nears and deepens once again. Faintly, mournfully, infinitely far away, the cry of a great train is heard, as it wails back across America: Whoo-hoo-oo-hoo-oo-hoo-oo. (The cry fades back, away, into the moon-drenched scenery of America: there is faint thunder of wheels pounding at the river’s edge. The scene nears and deepens with terrific instancy—the train is now heard plainly: it is the great Pacific Nine stroking the night with the pistoned velocity of its full speed): chucka-lucka, chucka-lucka, chucka-lucka, chucka-lucka, chucka-lucka. (The scene nears and deepens through the night: Pacific Nine, like a lighted thunderbolt, is smashing westward through Nebraska.)
pacific nine: Ho-Idaho! Ho-Idaho! Ho-Idaho—ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! (Chucka-lucka, chucka-lucka, chucka-lucka, chucka-lucka, chucka-lucka: with fierce bull-bellows, hoarse with pride, she laughs her jolly laughter.)
The scene nears and deepens once again: it is a country road in Illinois, the moon burns brightly on an unpaved road that goes straight as a string between tall walls of corn.
the corn blades (very softly, rustling stiffly): Ah coarse and cool, ah coarse and cool, America.
(The breeze dies, the corn stands motionless, moon-white the silence of the road again.)
A Listener:
. . . Is it a lion in the mouth sulfurous . . . a cat in the eye humorous, a fox in the paw felonious that prowls the edge of night’s great wall forever, and that will not let us sleep?
Who are you that keep vigil in the night? Who are you that from night’s consistory the watches of the earth’s huge conscience bear? Who are you that from outer dark bring to the cell of this our waiting and most mortal solitude the eye of all your dark enormous listening—child, brother, demon, parent of the night, oh, you Communicant of this America, to us, your tongueless children of the night, on this dark land and waiting, we your children waiting, turn to you, as from the beginning, waiting—dark father of our waiting, speak!
Heart of the night, the spirit of our unsung hope we bring to you! Lord of the night, the freight of all our huge unuttered longing, we bring to you! Tongue of the night, to whom so tongueless we have tongue-less spoken, knowledgeless so knowing known, and all unuttered uttered all the unspoke quantity of our impossible desire, the wild unuttered blood of this America and its unuttered prophecy—great hound of darkness ever running in our blood, we bring to you!
Caves the mined darkness to the yellow flood, we turn to you! Still, from the silence heard, the unheard foot, we turn to you! Or waits in silentness, as here to-night, the blazing crater of the moon, on this our large unfinished land—oh, hound, forever running in our blood, we turn to you!
Son of the night, we speak to you.
Eye of the night, we speak to you.
Lord of the night, to whom so often, from the million cells of night, out of the wilderness ourselves, the children of the night, have spoken—oh hound, forever running in the blood of these ourselves, and all our dark Americas, we speak to you.
. . . No answer? Waiting? Forever, as it was from the beginning, waiting? As it was from the beginning, waiting, knowing always you were there? No word, then? Silence again, tonight? No sound, then? But the rustle of the leaves across America.
the leaves: . . . promise . . . promise . . . promise promise.
Where shall we go now? What shall we do?
’Twixt beetling seas, the star-flung crustaceans of the continent and darkness, darkness, and the cool enfolding night, and stars and magic on America—where shall we go now, and what shall we do?
Where shall we go now and what shall we do? Down in the South beside the road, the country Negro, clay-caked, marching, mournful, and the car’s brief glare—the sudden spoke and forking of the dusty roads, a sleeping town—street-lights make spangles through the moving leaves, the corner houses are so bright—and then the earth, the pine-land, and the rushing cars again across America—and where shall we go now, and what shall we do?
Here South by radiance of the mill at night, dynamic humming behind light-glazed glass, the weft and shuttle of the spindle room, and then the pines, the clay, the cotton-fields again.
“Do you remember how we used to take an hour to Reynoldstown on Sunday afternoons—and doin’ good if we could make it in an hour? Well, it’s twenty-seven minutes now, not pushing it. The roads are so much better now—did you see that cat! did you see its eyeballs in the glare? Sure, that’s the Willoughby: she’s running full-time now: that and the other mills are what makes the town. . . . The houses? Sure, that’s the mill-town village—yes, they’re all alike. You mustn’t think it is so bad; I know these people: they’re better off than they ever have been. Wages?—sure, they’re low—but you don’t get the idea: in most of those little houses that you see there, you’ll find three or four members of the family all at work. That’s fifty-six bucks a week—more than these people ever dreamed about before. Why, they’re in clover now—see there’s the mill store—”
A plain brick front, and plate-glass and lights burning late: the provender of poor white people, the sacks of flour piled in the middle, and slabs of fatback racked up crudely like essential stuff, the loaded shelves upon each side with canned familiar articles, tea, coffee, sugar, the provender of a meal, a little glass case toward the front with sticks of licorice, tobacco, penny-candies, a tin ice-cooler, brilliant red and modern-looking, provided by the Coca-Cola people, filled with freezing water, floating ice, and soda-pop—a slattern-looking woman with hanked hair, and the slow, distrustful look poor people have when they come in to trade—the mill-store keeper, with grayed hair and ruined teeth—a poor white just a little better off and—thus mistrustful—“these mill-hands are a pretty sorry lot—as tough as they make them, poor white trash”—he is unhappy, too; behind the flour sacks is a jug of corn—
“You see, now: they’re in clover. They’re better off than they have ever been before: that’s the thing these labor agitators from the North can’t understand.”
Where shall we go now? What shall we do?
The punctual flash across the darkness of the beacon-light; lost in the upper air, the night-plane roaring North from Jacksonville, a small blue light that bores across the night as Brat and Nell sit on the porch and listen: the children are asleep, the bolls are opening—“She’s going North tonight”—the vast and thrilling sadness of the katydids are making sound—where shall we go now, and what shall we do?
Two thousand miles away, upon the coast of Maine, a silent road beside the sea, thick-set with spruce, so close, so near, and yet almost you’d never know the sea was there—save where the lighthouse flashes from the darkness of the point, so close beside the sea, you’d hardly know the sea was there: the little houses sleep beneath the moon, in moonlit fields the cows lie bedded on their haunches in the moon, white as a string and winding, the road winds back beneath the moon, so close beside the sea, so sheltered from the sea, so hidden from the sea, you know is there.
Where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
“There’s almost nothing quite so good this time of night in New Orleans: they split a crispy, French, and flaky loaf of bread in two and pave the inside with beef or pork or ham, salt, pepper, and some kind of pungent relish—or if the oyster season’s on, with six or eight big oysters, fried flaky brown, the way they know how to do it there—I don’t know how they do it, but they call the thing a Poor Boy Sandwich, and the price of it is just ten cents, a dime. I guess they got the name from this, because that’s the only thing that’s poor about it. Why don’t you and Pat go down and bring us back about a half-dozen?—we’ll sit here in the garden, I’ll take beef for mine.—I have remembered nights like these when people plugged a watermelon with champagne—you cut a plug out, and you poured iced champagne in—and you would sit there in the garden, eating watermelon on a night like this: how bright and still it is tonight, the moon makes brightness through magnolia leaves, there is so much of death, of life, of stillness, and of fragrance here around us; on nights like these, the river hooks around you like an elbow, and you always know it is above the town.
What shall we do now, and where shall we go?
Fast-heard, soon-lost, the wheeling noises of the carnival; and sinners wailing in a church in Niggertown. At night, the cars pick tattered tidings from the sides of barns: the ragged remnants of the circus clowns, and mangled notice that Carl Hagenbeck has been to town, Sapolio. Across the width of Indiana the merits of Carter’s Little Liver Pills are blazoned in the moon, and from the upper sweep of the Brooklyn Bridge, the blank walls of the tenements advise man that departed ghosts of Cardui were there.
The fields are dreaming through Virginia, there is the silent stature of the moonlit trees, far off and running the faint baying of the hound, moon-white in silence and the ghosts of absence, the houses are so sad, and there is something lost and dead and long ago, something too haunting in Virginia, that horses cannot cure.
OH, WASHINGTON
Where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
It’s all the Government—that’s Washington—the buildings are all lighted up—the Capitol and the Monument—the White House is just down the street, across the Park. At half-past four you can watch them pouring from the Veterans’ Bureau, and you wonder where they all come from. A lot of them are young kids from Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama—from Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio, way out West . . . they pass the civil service, and they get their little ninety or a hundred per . . . of course, they think it’s wonderful, the kids, I mean. Later on, it’s not so good. Of course, you read about the big stuff—the President, the Cabinet, and the Embassies . . . the High Society stuff. . . but the tadpoles never get in on that—you’d know as much about it if you were still living down in Libya Hill . . . you get so you don’t care—you wouldn’t walk across the street to see the President—it gives the tourists a great thrill, but here, well—it’s all old stuff to us, we’re used to it . . . taxi-drivers, drifters, people hunting for a job, people with an axe to grind, all the kids from Carolina and Virginia—kids from everywhere, old maids, worn-out people, all the broken-down old people with a little pension—they all come here, and—Go out and take a walk before you go to bed—it’s all the Government—but the way the search-lights flash across the air and cross—somehow it makes you feel as if—as if—well, over there upon the other side, that is Virginia—and beyond that, well, you’ll like the way the searchlights flash and cross—
Where shall I go now? What shall I do?
Great barns sleep proudly in the swelling earth of Pennsylvania Dutch; at night-time, there are furnace flares across New Jersey: and then dumb ears beneath the river-bed and voices in the tunnel, stopped for Brooklyn; upon the elevated platforms, people waiting for the trains, within the lighted canyons of the city’s gulch, the lighted serpent of the train roars by—where shall we go now, and what shall we do?
Upon the tide, the tugs slide moveless in the water, the loaded barge-strings come down after them in silent linkages of light—green, red, and white—in patterned schemes of loneliness, light moves in silence, and the chasmed hackles of Manhattan are blazing in the moon.
OH, MANHATTAN
Where shall we go now? What shall we do?
Here on Manhattan’s swarming rock to-night a million feet are moving toward the sky-flung faery and the great Medusa of the night, the star-sown lights incredible are wrought into the robe of night itself, so masoned in the architecture of the night that there is nothing now but lights and darkness, the jewelled pollen of the lights that climb, in linkless chains, sustained and fixed upon the great wall of the night, until we know that there are only the great vertices of dark and light, and that the buildings never were.
Where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
Perhaps to-night, to-night, we shall all find at last what we are waiting for here in America. Or perhaps tonight again we’ll prowl the facades of Rat’s Alley where the dead men live. Night has a million windows and a million feet are marching somewhere in the night—where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
Perhaps to-night we’ll prowl the livid glare of light upon the swarming rock—perhaps we’ll go uptown to-night and look up at enormous signs where the electric fishes play. Along toward dusk they change the bulbs: you know, a sign like that has so many million bulbs, it keeps a guy busy changing them. There are so many bulbs; so many bulbs burn out—and Jesus! you should see the size of him, the way he looks up there beside the fish.
But where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
Perhaps we’ll sit on porches in the little towns to-night, in leafy streets, behind respiring points of lighted ash, and listen to cars passing and the radios, and certain sounds of music from afar.
Where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
It is so cool to-night: down by the railroad tracks the whores sit with their faces pressed against the grating on the doors, and breathe the sweetness of the air, and switching engines going by: “Gee, Grace, I wish we could get in a swim to-night. . . . If Eddie comes around at closing time, let’s see if he won’t take us to the lake.”
Put dimes and nickels in the old piano, Johnny; we’ll play for you again “Love’s Old Sweet Song.”
Where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
It is so cool to-night, and everywhere there are young lovers, somewhere, and young voices, and the faint and broken music of a dance, and the promise of the leaves across America.
OH, BOSTON
Where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
The cop in Boston, twirling at the stick—“Just one lone bum”—and ruminant—“just one lone bum upon the Common. That was all to-night . . . well, good-night, Joe”—the windows fogged with pungent steam of hamburgers; the blackened fingers of compositors, pressing ink and hunger into spongy bread—“I see these guys in Spain have started in again”—and “Good-night, good-night.”
Where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
The Parson strokes his lantern jaws reflectively and smiles with artificial teeth to-night upon his ruined town. The two-million-dollar courthouse is bathed in secret, solid light just like the lighted buildings of Government at Washington. The million-dollar jail and city hall, also the Parson’s work, is bathed with baleful reds and purples on its pyramided crest. The Boom is over, and six hundred ruined men are rotting in their graves to-night, and sixty-four have shattered bullet fractures in their skulls—ten thousand more are living as shells live and watch the darkness from their beds to-night in Pleasanton—the town is still and lovely in the darkness, you’d never know to see such lovely buildings that the town is dead.—“We’re coming back,” the Parson says, and smiles at his police force: they’re all young men now, they have such snappy uniforms, neat khaki trousers, crisp brown shirts—you see their guns now, the deadly butt-ends holstered from the waist, a deadly arsenal of cartridge belts around them—they cruise in high-powered cars right down the middle of the streets, just waiting, purring softly their high-powered cars, and waiting in the streets of Pleasanton—there is something in their eyes that young men in the streets of Pleasanton did not use to have.
The cops on the new force are such nice young fellows now—two kids are spitting through their shredded lips to-night, out through the gap-holes where their good teeth have been—they’re country kids from Zebulon, and they had a little too much corn to drink—well, they’re coming round now, and they’re asking fuddled questions of each other, they’ll have the whole night through to sober up and think it over in the Parson’s million-dollar jail. Out at the country club a dance is on, the saxophones are wailing loud: the Club has good Scotch nowadays, some of the crowd, however, sticks to corn. But, as the Parson says, “It’s Progress, and we’re coming back”—the Parson will address the federated civic clubs tomorrow upon Progress and Coming Back—and so good-night. Good-night, goodnight. Good-night, sweet prince, and flights of angels guide thee to thy rest.
What shall we do now? And where shall we go?
Outside of town, at Lester’s Cabins—after the Boom, it folded up, but they’re getting a big crowd out there every night these days, they’re coming back—the kids with waggish fingers are doing—with a one! a two! a three! a four!—The Big Apple—there’s so much nigger-drollness in it, they are so expert now, the girls have lovely legs—and there is something in them that the Parson maybe with his Progress never thought about. And so good-night, good-night. Where shall we go now? And what shall we do?
OH, CHICAGO
Who comes by darkness to the blasted land shall not find darkness in the blasted land; the hills are ruined in the blasted land, but who comes by darkness to the blasted land will find hell’s beauty in the blasted land, the forge of Tubal in the blasted land, the flare of Vulcan and the tide of Styx: smoke-flares of torment, fires of burning, hell, beauty, Pittsburgh in the blasted land, the vast smoke-haunted limbo of earth’s travail and man’s labor in the blasted land. What shall we do now? And where shall we go?
The lake out here tonight is vast and dark and cool: and there is nothing in this world more arrogant and proud and splendid than the shirt-front of Chicago. It has the best shirt-front on earth, and underneath that shirt-front is nothing but the naked flesh. Upon one side the lake: the vast curve of the linked lights, the parkways and the boulevard, the tides of traffic thronging ceaseless into unknown power and mystery—upon the other side, the battlemented shirt-front of America, the cliff-like wall of mighty buildings, sown with a diamond dust of lights, the clubs, the great hotels, the vast apartment-houses. And behind that is—a million miles of brutal jungle that is called Chicago.
It is a place that you’re at home in right away: perhaps it is the train-smoke that does the thing to you. You smell the smoke the minute you get off the train, and it does something fierce and wonderful to you: it’s better than a shot of gin, it’s better than the breath of air off of the prairies which for the most part you can’t smell anyway, you just breathe it in and you know that here comes everybody: Wops, Swedes, Jews, Dutchmen, Micks, and all the rest of them, and you can take it, and you are in America, Chicago, U.S.A.
