Thomas Wolfe - Thomas Wolfe - Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel

“My Gawd!” said Thelma, in a tinny voice. “What’ve we got here?” She thrust out her sharp wrenny face, and studied Eugene insolently.

“I brought you a new beau, Thelma,” said Jim Trivett.

“Ain’t he the lankiest feller you ever seen?” said Lily Jones impersonally. “How tall are you, son?” she added, addressing him in a kind drawl.

He winced a little.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think about six three.”

“He’s more than that!” said Thelma positively. “He’s seven foot tall or I’m a liar.”

“He hasn’t measured since last week,” said Jim Trivett. “He can’t be sure about it.”

“He’s young, too,” said Lily, staring at him intently. “How old are you, son?”

Eugene turned his pallid face away, indefinitely.

“Why,” he croaked, “I’m about —”

“He’s going on eighteen,” said Jim Trivett loyally. “Don’t you worry about him. Old Legs knows all the ropes, all right. He’s a bearcat. I wouldn’t kid you. He’s been there.”

“He don’t look that old,” said Lily doubtfully. “I wouldn’t call him more’n fifteen, to look at his face. Ain’t he got a little face, though?” she demanded in a slow puzzled voice.

“It’s the only one I’ve got,” said Eugene angrily. “Sorry I can’t change it for a larger one.”

“It looks so funny stickin’ way up there above you,” she went on patiently.

Thelma nudged her sharply.

“That’s because he’s got a big frame,” she said. “Legs is all right. When he begins to fill out an’ put some meat on them bones he’s goin’ to make a big man. You’ll be a heartbreaker sure, Legs,” she said harshly, taking his cold hand and squeezing it. In him the ghost, his stranger, turned grievously away. O God! I shall remember, he thought.

“Well,” said Jim Trivett, “let’s git goin’.” He embraced Thelma again. They fumbled amorously.

“You go on upstairs, son,” said Lily. “I’ll be up in a minute. The door’s open.”

“See you later, ‘Gene,” said Jim Trivett. “Stay with them, son.”

He hugged the boy roughly with one arm, and went into the room to the left with Thelma.

Eugene mounted the creaking stairs slowly and entered the room with the open door. A hot mass of coals glowed flamelessly in the hearth. He took off his hat and overcoat and threw them across a wooden bed. Then he sat down tensely in a rocker and leaned forward, holding his trembling fingers to the heat. There was no light save that of the coals; but, by their dim steady glow, he could make out the old and ugly wall-paper, stained with long streaks of water rust, and scaling, in dry tattered scrolls, here and there. He sat quietly, bent forward, but he shook violently, as with an ague, from time to time. Why am I here? This is not I, he thought.

Presently he heard the woman’s slow heavy tread upon the stairs: she entered in a swimming tide of light, bearing a lamp before her. She put the lamp down on a table and turned the wick. He could see her now more plainly. Lily was a middle-aged country woman, with a broad heavy figure, unhealthily soft. Her smooth peasant face was mapped with fine little traceries of wrinkles at the corners of mouth and eyes, as if she had worked much in the sun. She had black hair, coarse and abundant. She was whitely plastered with talcum powder. She was dressed shapelessly in a fresh loose dress of gingham, unbelted. She was dressed like a housewife, but she conceded to her profession stockings of red silk, and slippers of red felt, trimmed with fur, in which she walked with a flat-footed tread.

The woman fastened the door, and returned to the hearth where the boy was now standing. He embraced her with feverish desire, fondling her with his long nervous hands. Indecisively, he sat in the rocker and drew her down clumsily on his knee. She yielded her kisses with the coy and frigid modesty of the provincial harlot, turning her mouth away. She shivered as his cold hands touched her.

“You’re cold as ice, son,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

She chafed him with rough embarrassed professionalism. In a moment she rose impatiently.

“Let’s git started,” she said. “Where’s my money?”

He thrust two crumpled bills into her hand.

Then he lay down beside her. He trembled, unnerved and impotent. Passion was extinct in him.

The massed coals caved in the hearth. The lost bright wonder died.

When he went down stairs, he found Jim Trivett waiting in the hall, holding Thelma by the hand. Lily led them out quietly, after peering through the lattice into the fog, and listening for a moment.

“Be quiet,” she whispered, “there’s a man across the street. They’ve been watching us lately.”

“Come again, Slats,” Thelma murmured, pressing his hand.

They went out softly, treading gently until they reached the road. The fog had thickened: the air was saturated with fine stinging moisture.

At the corner, in the glare of the street-lamp, Jim Trivett released his breath with loud relief, and stepped forward boldly.

“Damn!” he said. “I thought you were never coming. What were you trying to do with the woman, Legs?” Then, noting the boy’s face, he added quickly, with warm concern: “What’s the matter, ‘Gene? Don’t you feel good?”

“Wait a minute!” said Eugene thickly. “Be all right!”

He went to the curb, and vomited into the gutter. Then he straightened, mopping his mouth with a handkerchief.

“How do you feel?” asked Jim Trivett. “Better?”

“Yes,” said Eugene, “I’m all right now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” said Jim Trivett chidingly.

“It came on all of a sudden,” said Eugene. He added presently: “I think it was something I ate at that damn Greek’s to-night.”

“I felt all right,” said Jim Trivett. “A cup of coffee will fix you up,” he added with cheerful conviction.

They mounted the hill slowly. The light from winking cornerlamps fell with a livid stare across the fronts of the squalid houses.

“Jim,” said Eugene, after a moment’s pause.

“Yes. What is it?”

“Don’t say anything about my getting sick,” he said awkwardly.

Surprised, Jim Trivett stared at him.

“Why not? There’s nothing in that,” he said. “Pshaw, boy, any one’s likely to get sick.”

“Yes, I know. But I’d rather you wouldn’t.”

“Oh, all right. I won’t. Why should I?” said Jim Trivett.

Eugene was haunted by his own lost ghost: he knew it to be irrecoverable. For three days he avoided every one: the brand of his sin, he felt, was on him. He was published by every gesture, by every word. His manner grew more defiant, his greeting to life more unfriendly. He clung more closely to Jim Trivett, drawing a sad pleasure from his coarse loyal praise. His unappeased desire began to burn anew: it conquered his bodily disgust and made new pictures. At the end of the week he went again, alone, to Exeter, No more of him, he felt, could be lost. This time he sought out Thelma.

When he went home for Christmas, his loins were black with vermin. The great body of the State lay like a barren giant below the leaden reek of the skies. The train roared on across the vast lift of the Piedmont: at night, as he lay in his berth, in a diseased coma, it crawled up into the great fortress of the hills. Dimly, he saw their wintry bulk, with its bleak foresting. Below a trestle, silent as a dream, a white rope of water coiled between its frozen banks. His sick heart lifted in the haunting eternity of the hills. He was hillborn. But at dawn, as he came from the cars with the band of returning students, his depression revived. The huddle of cheap buildings at the station seemed meaner and meaner than ever before. The hills, above the station flats, with their cheap propped houses, had the unnatural closeness of a vision. The silent Square seemed to have rushed together during his absence, and as he left the car and descended the street to Dixieland, it was as if he devoured toy-town distances with a giant’s stride.