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

“No,” said George Graves.

“Well, keep Hal out of trouble,” said Ralph Rolls.

Julius Arthur laughed roughly and thrust his hand through Eugene’s hair. “Old Hairbreadth Hal,” he said. “The cutthroat from Saw–Tooth Gap!”

“Don’t let ’em climb your frame, son,” said Van Yeats, turning his quiet pleasant face on Eugene. “If you need help, let me know.”

“So long, boys.”

“So long.”

They crossed the street, mixing in nimble horse-play, and turned down past the church along a sloping street that led to the garages. George Graves and Eugene continued up the hill.

“Julius is a good boy,” said George Graves. “His father makes more money than any other lawyer in town.”

“Yes,” said Eugene, still brooding on Dixieland and his clumsy deceptions.

A street-sweeper walked along slowly uphill, beside his deep wedge-bodied cart. From time to time he stopped the big slow-footed horse and, sweeping the littered droppings of street and gutter into a pan, with a long-handled brush, dumped his collections into the cart. Let not Ambition mock their useful toil.

Three sparrows hopped deftly about three fresh smoking globes of horse-dung, pecking out tidbits with dainty gourmandism. Driven away by the approaching cart, they skimmed briskly over to the bank, with bright twitters of annoyance. One too like thee, tameless, and swift, and proud.

George Graves ascended the hill with a slow ponderous rhythm, staring darkly at the ground.

“Say, ‘Gene!” he said finally. “I don’t believe he makes that much.”

Eugene thought seriously for a moment. With George Graves, it was necessary to resume a discussion where it had been left off three days before.

“Who?” he said, “John Dorsey? Yes, I think he does,” he added, grinning.

“Not over $2,500, anyway,” said George Graves gloomily.

“No — three thousand, three thousand!” he said, in a choking voice.

George Graves turned to him with a sombre, puzzled smile. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“O you fool! You damn fool!” gasped Eugene. “You’ve been thinking about it all this time.”

George Graves laughed sheepishly, with embarrassment, richly.

From the top of the hill at the left, the swelling unction of the Methodist organ welled up remotely from the choir, accompanied by a fruity contralto voice, much in demand at funerals. Abide with me.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!

George Graves turned and examined the four large black houses, ascending on flat terraces to the church, of Paston Place.

“That’s a good piece of property, ‘Gene,” he said. “It belongs to the Paston estate.”

Fast falls the even-tide. Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast, in intricacies of laborious song.

“It will all go to Gil Paston some day,” said George Graves with virtuous regret. “He’s not worth a damn.”

They had reached the top of the hill. Church Street ended levelly a block beyond, in the narrow gulch of the avenue. They saw, with quickened pulse, the little pullulation of the town.

A negro dug tenderly in the round loamy flowerbeds of the Presbyterian churchyard, bending now and then to thrust his thick fingers gently in about the roots. The old church, with its sharp steeple, rotted slowly, decently, prosperously, like a good man’s life, down into its wet lichened brick. Eugene looked gratefully, with a second’s pride, at its dark decorum, its solid Scotch breeding.

“I’m a Presbyterian,” he said. “What are you?”

“An Episcopalian, when I go,” said George Graves with irreverent laughter.

“To hell with these Methodists!” Eugene said with an elegant, disdainful face. “They’re too damn common for us.” God in three persons — blessed Trinity. “Brother Graves,” he continued, in a fat well-oiled voice, “I didn’t see you at prayer-meeting Wednesday night. Where in Jesus’ name were you?”

With his open palm he struck George Graves violently between his meaty shoulders. George Graves staggered drunkenly with high resounding laughter.

“Why, Brother Gant,” said he, “I had a little appointment with one of the Good Sisters, out in the cow-shed.”

Eugene gathered a telephone pole into his wild embrace, and threw one leg erotically over its second foot-wedge. George Graves leaned his heavy shoulder against it, his great limbs drained with laughter.

There was a hot blast of steamy air from the Appalachian Laundry across the street and, as the door from the office of the washroom opened, they had a moment’s glimpse of negresses plunging their wet arms into the liquefaction of their clothes.

George Graves dried his eyes. Laughing wearily, they crossed over.

“We oughtn’t to talk like that, ‘Gene,” said George Graves reproachfully. “Sure enough! It’s not right.”

He became moodily serious rapidly. “The best people in this town are church members,” he said earnestly. “It’s a fine thing.”

“Why?” said Eugene, with an idle curiosity.

“Because,” said George Graves, “you get to know all the people who are worth a damn.”

Worth being damned, he thought quickly. A quaint idea.

“It helps you in a business way. They come to know you and respect you. You won’t get far in this town, ‘Gene, without them. It pays,” he added devoutly, “to be a Christian.”

“Yes,” Eugene agreed seriously, “you’re right.” To walk together to the kirk, with a goodly company.

He thought sadly of his lost sobriety, and of how once, lonely, he had walked the decent lanes of God’s Scotch town. Unbidden they came again to haunt his memory, the shaven faces of good tradesmen, each leading the well washed kingdom of his home in its obedient ritual the lean hushed smiles of worship, the chained passion of devotion, as they implored God’s love upon their ventures, or delivered their virgin daughters into the holy barter of marriage. And from even deeper adyts of his brain there swam up slowly to the shores of his old hunger the great fish whose names he scarcely knew — whose names, garnered with blind toil from a thousand books, from Augustine, himself a name, to Jeremy Taylor, the English metaphysician, were brief evocations of scalded light, electric, phosphorescent, illuminating by their magic connotations the vast far depths of ritual and religion: They came — Bartholomew, Hilarius, Chrysostomos, Polycarp, Anthony, Jerome, and the forty martyrs of Cappadocia who walked the waves — coiled like their own green shadows for a moment, and were gone.

“Besides,” said George Graves, “a man ought to go anyway. Honesty’s the best policy.”

Across the street, on the second floor of a small brick three-story building that housed several members of the legal, medical, surgical, and dental professions, Dr. H. M. Smathers pumped vigorously with his right foot, took a wad of cotton from his assistant, Miss Lola Bruce, and thrusting it securely into the jaw of the unseen patient, bent his fashionable bald head intently. A tiny breeze blew back the thin curtains, and revealed him, white-jacketed, competent, drill in hand.

“Do you feel that?” he said tenderly.

“Wrogd gdo gurk!”

“Spit!” With thee conversing, I forget all time.

“I suppose,” said George Graves thoughtfully, “the gold they use in people’s teeth is worth a lot of money.”

“Yes,” said Eugene, finding the idea attractive, “if only one person in ten has gold fillings that would be ten million in the United States alone. You can figure on five dollars’ worth each, can’t you?”

“Easy!” said George Graves. “More than that.” He brooded lusciously a moment. “That’s a lot of money,” he said.

In the office of the Rogers–Malone Undertaking Establishment the painful family of death was assembled, “Horse” Hines, tilted back in a swivel chair, with his feet thrust out on the broad window-ledge, chatted lazily with Mr. C. M. Powell, the suave silent partner. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest. Forget not yet.