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

Mr. Goulderbilt was a millionaire. He was driven into town in a big Packard, but he got out and went along the streets like other men.

One time Gant pointed him out to Eugene. He was about to enter a bank.

“There he is,” whispered Gant. “Do you see him?”

Eugene nodded, wagging his head mechanically. He was unable to speak. Mr. Goulderbilt was a small dapper man, with black hair, black clothes, and a black mustache. His hands and feet were small.

“He’s got over $50,000,000,” said Gant. “You’d never think it to look at him, would you?”

And Eugene dreamed of these money princes living in a princely fashion. He wanted to see them riding down a street in a crested coach around which rode a teetering guard of liveried outriders. He wanted their fingers to be heavily gemmed, their clothes trimmed with ermine, their women coroneted with flashing mosaics of amethyst, beryl, ruby, topaz, sapphire, opal, emerald, and wearing thick ropes of pearls. And he wanted to see them living in palaces of alabaster columns, eating in vast halls upon an immense creamy table from vessels of old silver — eating strange fabulous foods — swelling unctuous paps of a fat pregnant sow, oiled mushrooms, calvered salmon, jugged hare, the beards of barbels dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce, carps’ tongues, dormice and camels’ heels, with spoons of amber headed with diamond and carbuncle, and cups of agate, studded with emeralds, hyacinths, and rubies — everything, in fact, for which Epicure Mammon wished.

Eugene met only one millionaire whose performances in public satisfied him, and he, unhappily, was crazy. His name was Simon.

Simon, when Eugene first saw him, was a man of almost fifty years. He had a strong, rather heavy figure of middling height, a lean brown face, with shadowy hollows across the cheeks, always closely shaven, but sometimes badly scarred by his gouging fingernails, and a long thin mouth that curved slightly downward, subtle, sensitive, lighting his whole face at times with blazing demoniac glee. He had straight abundant hair, heavily grayed, which he kept smartly brushed and flattened at the sides. His clothing was loose and well cut: he wore a dark coat above baggy gray flannels, silk shirt rayed with broad stripes, a collar to match, and a generous loosely knotted tie. His waistcoats were of a ruddy-brown chequered pattern. He had an appearance of great distinction.

Simon and his two keepers first came to Dixieland when difficulties with several of the Altamont hotels forced them to look for private quarters. The men took two rooms and a sleeping-porch, and paid generously.

“Why, pshaw!” said Eliza persuasively to Helen. “I don’t believe there’s a thing wrong with him. He’s as quiet and well-behaved as you please.”

At this moment there was a piercing yell upstairs, followed by a long peal of diabolical laughter. Eugene bounded up and down the hall in his exultancy and delight, producing little squealing noises in his throat. Ben, scowling, with a quick flicker of his mouth, drew back his hard white hand swiftly as if to cuff his brother. Instead, he jerked his head sideways to Eliza, and said with a soft, scornful laugh: “By God, mama, I don’t see why you have to take them in. You’ve got enough of them in the family already.”

“Mama, in heaven’s name —” Helen began furiously. At this moment Gant strode in out of the dusk, carrying a mottled package of pork chops, and muttering rhetorically to himself. There was another long peal of laughter above. He halted abruptly, startled, and lifted his head. Luke, listening attentively at the foot of the stairs, exploded in a loud boisterous guffaw, and the girl, her annoyance changing at once to angry amusement, walked toward her father’s inquiring face, and prodded him several times in the ribs.

“Hey?” he said startled. “What is it?”

“Miss Eliza’s got a crazy man upstairs,” she sniggered, enjoying his amazement.

“Jesus God!” Gant yelled frantically, wetting his big thumb swiftly on his tongue, and glancing up toward his Maker with an attitude of exaggerated supplication in his small gray eyes and the thrust of his huge bladelike nose. Then, letting his arms slap heavily at his sides, in a gesture of defeat, he began to walk rapidly back and forth, clucking his deprecation loudly. Eliza stood solidly, looking from one to another, her lips working rapidly, her white face hurt and bitter.

There was another long howl of mirth above. Gant paused, caught Helen’s eye, and began to grin suddenly in an unwilling sheepish manner.

“God have mercy on us,” he chuckled. “She’ll have the place filled with all of Barnum’s freaks the next thing you know.”

At this moment, Simon, self-contained, distinguished and grave in his manner, descended the steps with Mr. Gilroy and Mr. Flannagan, his companions. The two guards were red in the face, and breathed stertorously as if from some recent exertion. Simon, however, preserved his habitual appearance of immaculate and well-washed urbanity.

“Good evening,” he remarked suavely. “I hope I have not kept you waiting long.” He caught sight of Eugene.

“Come here, my boy,” he said very kindly.

“It’s all right,” remarked Mr. Gilroy, encouragingly. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Eugene moved into the presence.

“And what is your name, young man?” said Simon with his beautiful devil’s smile.

“Eugene.”

“That’s a very fine name,” said Simon. “Always try to live up to it.” He thrust his hand carelessly and magnificently into his coat pocket, drawing out under the boy’s astonished eyes, a handful of shining five — and ten-cent pieces.

“Always be good to the birds, my boy,” said Simon, and he poured the money into Eugene’s cupped hands.

Every one looked doubtfully at Mr. Gilroy.

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Mr. Gilroy cheerfully. “He’ll never miss it. There’s lots more where that came from.”

“He’s a mul-tye-millionaire,” Mr. Flannagan explained proudly. “We give him four or five dollars in small change every morning just to throw away.”

Simon caught sight of Gant for the first time.

“Look out for the Stingaree,” he cried. “Remember the Maine.”

“I tell you what,” said Eliza laughing. “He’s not so crazy as you think.”

‘That’s right,” said Mr. Gilroy, noting Gant’s grin. “The Stingaree’s a fish. They have them in Florida.”

“Don’t forget the birds, my friends,” said Simon, going out with his companions. “Be good to the birds.”

They became very fond of him. Somehow he fitted into the pattern of their life. None of them was uncomfortable in the presence of madness. In the flowering darkness of Spring, prisoned in a room, his satanic laughter burst suddenly out: Eugene listened, thrilled, and slept, unable to forget the smile of dark flowering evil, the loose pocket chinking heavily with coins.

Night, the myriad rustle of tiny wings. Heard lapping water of the inland seas.

— And the air will be filled with warm-throated plum-dropping bird-notes. He was almost twelve. He was done with childhood. As that Spring ripened he felt entirely, for the first time, the full delight of loneliness. Sheeted in his thin nightgown, he stood in darkness by the orchard window of the back room at Gant’s, drinking the sweet air down, exulting in his isolation in darkness, hearing the strange wail of the whistle going west.

The prison walls of self had closed entirely round him; he was walled completely by the esymplastic power of his imagination — he had learned by now to project mechanically, before the world, an acceptable counterfeit of himself which would protect him from intrusion. He no longer went through the torment of the recess flight and pursuit. He was now in one of the upper grades of grammar school, he was one of the Big Boys. His hair had been cut when he was nine years old, after a bitter siege against Eliza’s obstinacy. He no longer suffered because of the curls. But he had grown like a weed, he already topped his mother by an inch or two; his body was big-boned but very thin and fragile, with no meat on it; his legs were absurdly long, thin, and straight, giving him a curious scissored look as he walked with long bounding strides.