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

In the early hours of morning, at two or three o’clock, he would waken, and walk through the house weeping and entreating release. Eliza would send him to Spaugh at the hotel or to McGuire, at his residence, in Eugene’s charge. The doctors, surly and half-awake, peeled back his shirtsleeve and drove a needle with morphine deep in his upper arm. After that, he found relief and sleep again.

One night, at the supper hour, he returned to Dixieland, holding his tortured jaws between his hands. He found Eliza bending over the spitting grease of the red-hot stove. He cursed her for bearing him, he cursed her for allowing him to have teeth, he cursed her for lack of sympathy, motherly love, human kindliness.

Her white face worked silently above the heat.

“Get out of here,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s that accursed licker that makes you so mean.” She began to weep, brushing at her broad red nose with her hand.

“I never thought I’d live to hear such talk from a son of mine,” she said. She held out her forefinger with the old powerful gesture.

“Now, I want to tell you,” she said, “I’m not going to put up with you any longer. If you don’t get out of here at once I’m going to call 38 and let them take you.” This was the police station. It awoke unpleasant memories. He had spent the day in jail on two similar occasions. He became more violent than before, screamed a vile name at her, and made a motion to strike her. At this moment, Luke entered; he was on his way to Gant’s.

The antagonism between the boy and his older brother was deep and deadly. It had lasted for years. Now, trembling with anger, Luke came to his mother’s defense.

“You m-m-m-miserable d-d-degenerate,” he stuttered, unconsciously falling into the swing of the Gantian rhetoric. “You ought to b-b-b-be horsewhipped.”

He was a well grown and muscular young fellow of nineteen years, but too sensitive to all the taboos of brotherhood to be prepared for the attack Steve made on him. Steve drove at him viciously, smashing drunkenly at his face with both hands. He was driven gasping and blinded across the kitchen.

Wrong forever on the throne.

Somewhere, through fear and fury, Eugene heard Ben’s voice humming unconcernedly, and the slow picked tune on the piano.

“Ben!” he screamed, dancing about and grasping a hammer.

Ben entered like a cat. Luke was bleeding warmly from the nose.

“Come on, come on, you big bastard,” said Steve, exalted by his success, throwing himself into a fancy boxing posture. “I’ll take you on now. You haven’t got a chance, Ben,” he continued, with elaborate pity. “You haven’t got a chance, boy. I’ll tear your head off with what I know.”

Ben scowled quietly at him for a moment while he pranced softly about, proposing his fists in Police Gazette attitudes. Then, exploding suddenly in maniacal anger, the quiet one sprang upon the amateur pugilist with one bound, and flattened him with a single blow of his fist. Steve’s head bounced upon the floor in a most comforting fashion. Eugene gave a loud shriek of ecstasy and danced about, insane with joy, while Ben, making little snarling noises in his throat, leaped on his brother’s prostrate body and thumped his bruised skull upon the boards. There was a beautiful thoroughness about his wakened anger — it never made inquiries till later.

“Good old Ben,” screamed Eugene, howling with insane laughter. “Good old Ben.”

Eliza, who had been calling out loudly for help, the police, and the interference of the general public, now succeeded, with Luke’s assistance, in checking Ben’s assault, and pulling him up from his dazed victim. She wept bitterly, her heart laden with pain and sadness, while Luke, forgetful of his bloody nose, sorrowful and full of shame only because brother had struck brother, assisted Steve to his feet and brushed him off.

A terrible shame started up in each of them — they were unable to meet one another’s gaze. Ben’s thin face was very white; he trembled violently and, catching sight of Steve’s bleared eyes for a moment, he made a retching noise in his throat, went over to the sink, and drank a glass of cold water.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Eliza wept.

Helen came in from town with a bag of warm bread and cakes.

“What’s the matter?” she said, noting at once all that had happened.

“I don’t know,” said Eliza, her face working, shaking her head for several moments before she spoke. “It seems that the judgment of God is against us. There’s been nothing but misery all my life. All I want is a little peace.” She wept softly, wiping her weak bleared eyes with the back of her hand.

“Well, forget about it,” said Helen quietly. Her voice was casual, weary, sad. “How do you feel, Steve?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t make any trouble for any one, Helen,” he said, with a maudlin whimper. “No! No!” he continued in a brooding voice. “They’ve never given Steve a chance. They’re all down on him. They jumped on me, Helen. My own brothers jumped on me, sick as I am, and beat me up. It’s all right. I’m going away somewhere and try to forget. Stevie doesn’t hold any grudge against any one. He’s not built that way. Give me your hand, buddy,” he said, turning to Ben with nauseous sentimentality and extending his yellow fingers, “I’m willing to shake your hand. You hit me to-night, but Steve’s willing to forget.”

“Oh my God,” said Ben, grasping his stomach. He leaned weakly across the sink and drank another glass of water.

“No. No.” Steve began again. “Stevie isn’t built —”

He would have continued indefinitely in this strain, but Helen checked him with weary finality.

“Well, forget about it,” she said, “all of you. Life’s too short.”

Life was. At these moments, after battle, after all the confusion, antagonism, and disorder of their lives had exploded in a moment of strife, they gained an hour of repose in which they saw themselves with sad tranquillity. They were like men who, driving forward desperately at some mirage, turn, for a moment, to see their footprints stretching interminably away across the waste land of the desert; or I should say, they were like those who have been mad, and who will be mad again, but who see themselves for a moment quietly, sanely, at morning, looking with sad untroubled eyes into a mirror.

Their faces were sad. There was great age in them. They felt suddenly the distance they had come and the amount they had lived. They had a moment of cohesion, a moment of tragic affection and union, which drew them together like small jets of flame against all the senseless nihilism of life.

Margaret came in fearfully. Her eyes were red, her broad German face white and tearful. A group of excited boarders whispered in the hall.

“I’ll lose them all now,” Eliza fretted. “The last time three left. Over twenty dollars a week and money so hard to get. I don’t know what’s to become of us all.” She wept again.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Helen impatiently. “Forget about the boarders once in a while.”

Steve sank stupidly into a chair by the long table. From time to time he muttered sentimentally to himself. Luke, his face sensitive, hurt, ashamed around his mouth, stood by him attentively, spoke gently to him, and brought him a glass of water.

“Give him a cup of coffee, mama,” Helen cried irritably. “For heaven’s sake, you might do a little for him.”

“Why here, here,” said Eliza, rushing awkwardly to the gas range and lighting a burner. “I never thought — I’ll have some in a minute.”

Margaret sat in a chair on the other side of the disorderly table, leaning her face in her hand and weeping. Her tears dredged little gulches through the thick compost of rouge and powder with which she coated her rough skin.