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

“You must have a lot of money, Laura?” he said. “You do this every day, don’t you?”

“Daddy gets after me about it,” she admitted, “but I love to buy clothes. I spend all my money on clothes.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Nothing — whatever you like. It’s a lovely day to do something, isn’t it?”

“It’s a lovely day to do nothing. Would you like to go off somewhere, Laura?”

“I’d love to go off somewhere with you,” said Laura James.

“That is the idea, my girl. That is the idea,” he said exultantly, in throaty and exuberant burlesque. “We will go off somewhere alone — we will take along something to eat,” he said lusciously.

Laura went to her room and put on a pair of sturdy little slippers. Eugene went into the kitchen.

“Have you a shoe-box?” he asked Eliza.

“What do you want that for?” she said suspiciously.

“I’m going to the bank,” he said ironically. “I wanted something to carry my money in.” But immediately he added roughly:

“I’m going on a picnic.”

“Huh? Hah? What’s that you say?” said Eliza. “A picnic? Who are you going with? That girl?”

“No,” he said heavily, “with President Wilson, the King of England, and Dr. Doak. We’re going to have lemonade — I’ve promised to bring the lemons.”

“I’ll vow, boy!” said Eliza fretfully. “I don’t like it — your running off this way when I need you. I wanted you to make a deposit for me, and the telephone people will disconnect me if I don’t send them the money today.”

“O mama! For God’s sake!” he cried annoyed. “You always need me when I want to go somewhere. Let them wait! They can wait a day.”

“It’s overdue,” she said. “Well, here you are. I wish I had time to go off on picnics.” She fished a shoe-box out of a pile of magazines and newspapers that littered the top of a low cupboard.

“Have you got anything to eat?”

“We’ll get it,” he said, and departed.

They went down the hill, and paused at the musty little grocery around the corner on Woodson Street, where they bought crackers, peanut butter, currant jelly, bottled pickles, and a big slice of rich yellow cheese. The grocer was an old Jew who muttered jargon into a rabbi’s beard as if saying a spell against Dybbuks. The boy looked closely to see if his hands touched the food. They were not clean.

On their way up the hill, they stopped for a few minutes at Gant’s. They found Helen and Ben in the dining-room. Ben was eating breakfast, bending, as usual, with scowling attention, over his coffee, turning from eggs and bacon almost with disgust. Helen insisted on contributing boiled eggs and sandwiches to their provision: the two women went back into the kitchen. Eugene sat at table with Ben, drinking coffee.

“O-oh my God!” Ben said at length, yawning wearily. He lighted a cigarette. “How’s the Old Man this morning?”

“He’s all right, I think. Said he couldn’t eat breakfast.”

“Did he say anything to the boarders?”

“‘You damned scoundrels! You dirty Mountain Grills! Whee —!’ That was all.”

Ben snickered quietly.

“Did he hurt your hand? Let’s see.”

“No. You can’t see anything. It’s not hurt,” said Eugene, lifting his bandaged wrist.

“He didn’t hit you, did he?” asked Ben sternly.

“Oh, no. Of course not. He was just drunk. He was sorry about it this morning.”

“Yes,” said Ben, “he’s always sorry about it — after he’s raised all the hell he can.” He drank deeply at his cigarette, inhaling the smoke as if in the grip of a powerful drug.

“How’d you get along at college this year, ‘Gene?” he asked presently.

“I passed my work. I made fair grades — if that’s what you mean? I did better — this Spring,” he added, with some difficulty. “It was hard getting started — at the beginning.”

“You mean last Fall?”

Eugene nodded.

“What was the matter?” said Ben, scowling at him. “Did the other boys make fun of you?”

“Yes,” said Eugene, in a low voice.

“Why did they? You mean they didn’t think you were good enough for them? Did they look down on you? Was that it?” said Ben savagely.

“No,” said Eugene, very red in the face. “No. That had nothing to do with it. I look funny, I suppose. I looked funny to them.”

“What do you mean you look funny?” said Ben pugnaciously. “There’s nothing wrong with you, you know, if you didn’t go around looking like a bum. In God’s name,” he exclaimed angrily, “when did you get that hair cut last? What do you think you are: the Wild Man from Borneo?”

“I don’t like barbers!” Eugene burst out furiously. “That’s why! I don’t want them to go sticking their damned dirty fingers in my mouth. Whose business is it, if I never get my hair cut?”

“A man is judged by his appearance today,” said Ben sententiously. “I was reading an article by a big business man in The Post the other day. He says he always looks at a man’s shoes before he gives him a job.”

He spoke seriously, haltingly, in the same way that he read, without genuine conviction. Eugene writhed to hear his fierce condor prattle this stale hash of the canny millionaires, like any obedient parrot in a teller’s cage. Ben’s voice had a dull flat quality as he uttered these admirable opinions: he seemed to grope behind it all for some answer, with hurt puzzled eyes. As he faltered along, with scowling intensity, through a success-sermon, there was something poignantly moving in his effort: it was the effort of his strange and lonely spirit to find some entrance into life — to find success, position, companionship. And it was as if, spelling the words out with his mouth, a settler in the Bronx from the fat Lombard plain, should try to unriddle the new world by deciphering the World Almanac, or as if some woodsman, trapped by the winter, and wasted by an obscure and terrible disease, should hunt its symptoms and its cure in a book of Household Remedies.

“Did the Old Man send you enough money to get along on?” Ben asked. “Were you able to hold your own with the other boys? He can afford it, you know. Don’t let him stint you. Make him give it to you, ‘Gene.”

“I had plenty,” said Eugene, “all that I needed.”

“This is the time you need it — not later,” said Ben. “Make him put you through college. This is an age of specialization. They’re looking for college-trained men.”

“Yes,” said Eugene. He spoke obediently, indifferently, the hard bright mail of his mind undinted by the jargon: within, the Other One, who had no speech, saw.

“So get your education,” said Ben, scowling vaguely. “All the Big Men — Ford, Edison, Rockefeller — whether they had it or not, say it’s a good thing.”

“Why didn’t you go yourself?” said Eugene curiously.

“I didn’t have any one to tell me,” said Ben. “Besides, you don’t think the Old Man would give me anything, do you?” He laughed cynically. “It’s too late now.”

He was silent a moment; he smoked.

“You didn’t know I was taking a course in advertising, did you?” he asked, grinning.

“No. Where?”

“Through the Correspondence School,” said Ben. “I get my lessons every week. I don’t know,” he laughed diffidently, “I must be good at it. I make the highest grades they have — 98 or 100 every time. I get a diploma, if I finish the course.”

A blinding mist swam across the younger brother’s eyes. He did not know why. A convulsive knot gathered in his throat. He bent his head quickly and fumbled for his cigarettes. In a moment he said:

“I’m glad you’re doing it. I hope you finish, Ben.”