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

He would continue to roar at them from below as if they were wakefully attentive above.

“When I was your age, I had milked four cows, done all the chores, and walked eight miles through the snow by this time.”

Indeed, when he described his early schooling, he furnished a landscape that was constantly three feet deep in snow, and frozen hard. He seemed never to have attended school save under polar conditions.

And fifteen minutes later, he would roar again: “You’ll never amount to anything, you good-for-nothing bums! If one side of the wall caved in, you’d roll over to the other.”

Presently now there would be the rapid thud of feet upstairs, and one by one they would descend, rushing naked into the sitting-room with their clothing bundled in their arms. Before his roaring fire they would dress.

By breakfast, save for sporadic laments, Gant was in something approaching good humor. They fed hugely: he stoked their plates for them with great slabs of fried steak, grits fried in egg, hot biscuits, jam, fried apples. He departed for his shop about the time the boys, their throats still convulsively swallowing hot food and coffee, rushed from the house at the warning signal of the mellow-tolling final nine-o’clock school bell.

He returned for lunch — dinner, as they called it — briefly garrulous with the morning’s news; in the evening, as the family gathered in again, he returned, built his great fire, and launched his supreme invective, a ceremony which required a half hour in composition, and another three-quarters, with repetition and additions, in delivery. They dined then quite happily.

So passed the winter. Eugene was three; they bought him alphabet books, and animal pictures, with rhymed fables below. Gant read them to him indefatigably: in six weeks he knew them all by memory.

Through the late winter and spring he performed numberless times for the neighbors: holding the book in his hands he pretended to read what he knew by heart. Gant was delighted: he abetted the deception. Every one thought it extraordinary that a child should read so young.

In the Spring Gant began to drink again; his thirst withered, however, in two or three weeks, and shamefacedly he took up the routine of his life. But Eliza was preparing for a change.

It was 1904; there was in preparation a great world’s exposition at Saint Louis: it was to be the visual history of civilization, bigger, better, and greater than anything of its kind ever known before. Many of the Altamont people intended to go: Eliza was fascinated at the prospect of combining travel with profit.

“Do you know what?” she began thoughtfully one night, as she laid down the paper, “I’ve a good notion to pack up and go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“To Saint Louis,” she answered. “Why, say — if things work out all right, we might simply pull out and settle down there.” She knew that the suggestion of a total disruption of the established life, a voyage to new lands, a new quest of fortune fascinated him. It had been talked of years before when he had broken his partnership with Will Pentland.

“What do you intend to do out there? How are the children going to get along?”

“Why, sir,” she began smugly, pursing her lips thoughtfully, and smiling cunningly, “I’ll simply get me a good big house and drum up a trade among the Altamont people who are going.”

“Merciful God, Mrs. Gant!” he howled tragically, “you surely wouldn’t do a thing like that. I beg you not to.”

“Why, pshaw, Mr. Gant, don’t be such a fool. There’s nothing wrong in keeping boarders. Some of the most respectable people in this town do it.” She knew what a tender thing his pride was: he could not bear to be thought incapable of the support of his family — one of his most frequent boasts was that he was “a good provider.” Further, the residence of any one under his roof not of his blood and bone sowed the air about with menace, breached his castle walls. Finally, he had a particular revulsion against lodgers: to earn one’s living by accepting the contempt, the scorn, and the money of what he called “cheap boarders” was an almost unendurable ignominy.

She knew this but she could not understand his feeling. Not merely to possess property, but to draw income from it was part of the religion of her family, and she surpassed them all by her willingness to rent out a part of her home. She alone, in fact, of all the Pentlands was willing to relinquish the little moated castle of home; the particular secrecy and privacy of their walls she alone did not seem to value greatly. And she was the only one of them that wore a skirt.

Eugene had been fed from her breast until he was more than three years old: during the winter he was weaned. Something in her stopped; something began.

She had her way finally. Sometimes she would talk to Gant thoughtfully and persuasively about the World’s Fair venture. Sometimes, during his evening tirades, she would snap back at him using the project as a threat. Just what was to be achieved she did not know. But she felt it was a beginning for her. And she had her way finally.

Gant succumbed to the lure of new lands. He was to remain at home: if all went well he would come out later. The prospect, too, of release for a time excited him. Something of the old thrill of youth touched him. He was left behind, but the world lurked full of unseen shadows for a lonely man. Daisy was in her last year at school: she stayed with him. But it cost him more than a pang or two to see Helen go. She was almost fourteen.

In early April, Eliza departed, bearing her excited brood about her, and carrying Eugene in her arms. He was bewildered at this rapid commotion, but he was electric with curiosity and activity.

The Tarkintons and Duncans streamed in: there were tears and kisses. Mrs. Tarkinton regarded her with some awe. The whole neighborhood was a bit bewildered at this latest turn.

“Well, well — you never can tell,” said Eliza, smiling tearfully and enjoying the sensation she had provided. “If things go well we may settle down out there.”

“You’ll come back,” said Mrs. Tarkinton with cheerful loyalty. “There’s no place like Altamont.”

They went to the station in the street-car: Ben and Grover gleefully sat together, guarding a big luncheon hamper. Helen clutched nervously a bundle of packages. Eliza glanced sharply at her long straight legs and thought of the half-fare.

“Say,” she began, laughing indefinitely behind her hand, and nudging Gant, “she’ll have to scrooch up, won’t she? They’ll think you’re mighty big to be under twelve,” she went on, addressing the girl directly.

Helen stirred nervously.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Gant muttered.

“Pshaw!” said Eliza. “No one will ever notice her.”

He saw them into the train, disposed comfortably by the solicitous Pullman porter.

“Keep your eye on them, George,” he said, and gave the man a coin. Eliza eyed it jealously.

He kissed them all roughly with his mustache, but he patted his little girl’s bony shoulders with his great hand, and hugged her to him. Something stabbed sharply in Eliza.

They had an awkward moment. The strangeness, the absurdity of the whole project, and the monstrous fumbling of all life, held them speechless.

“Well,” he began, “I reckon you know what you’re doing.”

“Well, I tell you,” she said, pursing her lips, and looking out the window, “you don’t know what may come out of this.”

He was vaguely appeased. The train jerked, and moved off slowly. He kissed her clumsily.

“Let me know as soon as you get there,” he said, and he strode swiftly down the aisle.

“Good-by, good-by,” cried Eliza, waving Eugene’s small hand at the long figure on the platform. “Children,” she said, “wave good-by to your papa.” They all crowded to the window. Eliza wept.