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

The harsh hill-earth has moistly thawed and softened, rich soaking rain falls, fresh-bladed tender grass like soft hair growing sparsely streaks the land.

My Brother Ben’s face, thought Eugene, is like a piece of slightly yellow ivory; his high white head is knotted fiercely by his old man’s scowl; his mouth is like a knife, his smile the flicker of light across a blade. His face is like a blade, and a knife, and a flicker of light: it is delicate and fierce, and scowls beautifully forever, and when he fastens his hard white fingers and his scowling eyes upon a thing he wants to fix, he sniffs with sharp and private concentration through his long pointed nose. Thus women, looking, feel a well of tenderness for his pointed, bumpy, always scowling face: his hair shines like that of a young boy — it is crinkled and crisp as lettuce.

Into the April night-and-morning streets goes Ben. The night is brightly pricked with cool and tender stars. The orchard stirs leafily in the short fresh wind. Ben prowls softly out of the sleeping house. His thin bright face is dark within the orchard. There is a smell of nicotine and shoe leather under the young blossoms. His pigeon-toed tan shoes ring musically up the empty streets. Lazily slaps the water in the fountain on the Square; all the firemen are asleep — but Big Bill Merrick, the brave cop, hog-jowled and red, leans swinishly over mince-pie and coffee in Uneeda Lunch. The warm good ink-smell beats in rich waves into the street: a whistling train howls off into the Springtime South.

By the cool orchards in the dark the paper-carriers go. The copper legs of negresses in their dark dens stir. The creek brawls cleanly.

A new one, Number 6, heard boys speak of Foxy:

“Who’s Foxy?” asked Number 6.

“Foxy’s a bastard, Number 6. Don’t let him catch you.”

“The bastard caught me three times last week. In the Greek’s every time. Why can’t they let us eat?”

Number 3 thought of Friday morning — he had the Niggertown route.

“How many — 3?”

“One hundred and sixty-two.”

“How many Dead Heads you got, son?” said Mr. Randall cynically. “Do you ever try to collect from them?” he added, thumbing through the book.

“He takes it out in Poon–Tang,” said Foxy, grinning, “A week’s subscription free for a dose.”

“What you got to say about it?” asked Number 3 belligerently. “You’ve been knocking down on them for six years.”

“Jazz ’em all if you like,” said Randall, “but get the money. Ben, I want you to go round with him Saturday.”

Ben laughed silently and cynically into the air:

“Oh, my God!” he said. “Do you expect me to check up on the little thug? He’s been knocking down on you for the last six months.”

“All right! All right!” said Randall, annoyed. “That’s what I want you to find out.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Randall,” said Ben contemptuously, “he’s got niggers on that book who’ve been dead for five years. That’s what you get for keeping every little crook that comes along.”

“If you don’t get a move on, 3, I’ll give your route to another boy,” said Randall.

“Hell, get another boy. I don’t care,” said Number 3, toughly.

“Oh, for God’s sake! Listen to this, won’t you?” said Ben, laughing thinly and nodding to his angel, indicating Number 3 with a scowling jerk of his head.

“Yes, listen to this, won’t you! That’s what I said,” Number 3 answered pugnaciously.

“All right, little boy. Run on and deliver your papers now, before you get hurt,” said Ben, turning his scowl quietly upon him and looking at him blackly for a moment. “Ah, you little crook,” he said with profound loathing, “I have a kid brother who’s worth six like you.”

Spring lay strewn lightly like a fragrant gauzy scarf upon the earth; the night was a cool bowl of lilac darkness, filled with fresh orchard scents.

Gant slept heavily, rattling the loose window-sash with deep rasping snores; with short explosive thunders, ripping the lilac night, 36 began to climb Saluda. She bucked helplessly like a goat, her wheels spun furiously on the rails, Tom Cline stared seriously down into the milky boiling creek, and waited. She slipped, spun, held, ploughed slowly up, like a straining mule, into the dark. Content, he leaned far out the cab and looked: the starlight glimmered faintly on the rails. He ate a thick sandwich of cold buttered fried meat, tearing it raggedly and glueily staining it under his big black fingers. There was a smell of dogwood and laurel in the cool slow passage of the world. The cars clanked humpily across the spur; the switchman, bathed murkily in the hot yellow light of his perilous bank-edged hut, stood sullen at the switch.

Arms spread upon his cab-sill, chewing thoughtfully, Tom, goggle-eyed, looked carefully down at him. They had never spoken. Then in silence he turned and took the milk-bottle, half full of cold coffee, that his fireman offered him. He washed his food down with the large easy gurgling swallows of a bishop.

At 18 Valley Street, the red shack-porch, slime-scummed with a greasy salve of yellow negroid mud, quaked rottenly. Number 3’s square-folded ink-fresh paper struck flat against the door, falling on its edge stiffly to the porch like a block of light wood. Within, May Corpening stirred nakedly, muttering as if doped and moving her heavy copper legs, in the fetid bed-warmth, with the slow noise of silk.

Harry Tugman lit a Camel, drawing the smoke deep into his powerful ink-stained lungs as he watched the press run down. His bare arms were heavy-muscled as his presses. He dropped comfortably into his pliant creaking chair and tilted back, casually scanning the warm pungent sheet. Luxurious smoke steamed slowly from his nostrils. He cast the sheet away.

“Christ!” he said. “What a makeup!”

Ben came down stairs, moody, scowling, and humped over toward the ice-box.

“For God’s sake, Mac,” he called out irritably to the Make-up Man, as he scowled under the lifted lid, “don’t you ever keep anything except root-beer and sour milk?”

“What do you want, for Christ’s sake?”

“I’d like to get a Coca–Cola once in a while. You know,” he said bitingly, “Old Man Candler down in Atlanta is still making it.”

Harry Tugman cast his cigarette away.

“They haven’t got the news up here yet, Ben,” said he. “You’ll have to wait till the excitement over Lee’s surrender has died down. Come on,” he said abruptly, getting up, “let’s go over to the Greasy Spoon.”

He thrust his big head down into the deep well of the sink, letting the lukewarm water sluice refreshingly over his broad neck and blue-white sallow night-time face, strong, tough, and humorous. He soaped his hands with thick slathering suds, his muscles twisting slowly like big snakes.

He sang in his powerful quartette baritone:

“Beware! Beware! Beware!

Many brave hearts lie asleep in the deep,

So beware! Bee-WARE!”

Comfortably they rested in the warm completed exhaustion of the quiet press-room: upstairs the offices, bathed in green-yellow light, sprawled like men relaxed after work. The boys had gone to their routes. The place seemed to breathe slowly and wearily. The dawn-sweet air washed coolly over their faces. The sky was faintly pearled at the horizon.

Strangely, in sharp broken fragments, life awoke in the lilac darkness. Clop-clopping slowly on the ringing street, Number Six, Mrs. Goulderbilt’s powerful brown mare, drew inevitably on the bottle-clinking cream-yellow wagon, racked to the top with creamy extra-heavy high-priced milk. The driver was a fresh-skinned young countryman, richly odorous with the smell of fresh sweat and milk. Eight miles, through the starlit dewy fields and forests of Biltburn, under the high brick English lodgegate, they had come into the town.