Look Homeward, Angel Page 18

  Eliza boiled herself out at the baths daily; sometimes, he went along with her, leaving her with a sensation of drunken independence, while he went into the men's quarters, stripping himself in a cool room, entering thence a hot one lined with couches, shutting himself in a steam-closet where he felt himself momentarily dwindling into the raining puddle of sweat at his feet, to emerge presently on trembling legs and to be rolled and kneaded about magnificently in a huge tub by a powerful grinning negro. Later, languorous, but with a feeling of deep purification, he lay out on one of the couches, victoriously his own man in a man's world. They talked from couch to couch, or walked pot-belliedly about, sashed coyly with bath towels--malarial Southerners with malarial drawls, paunch-eyed alcoholics, purple-skinned gamblers, and broken down prize-fighters. He liked the smell of steam and of the sweaty men.

  Eliza sent him out on the streets at once with The Saturday Evening Post.

  "It won't hurt you to do a little light work after school," said she. And as he trudged off with his sack slung from his neck, she would call after him:

  "Spruce up, boy! Spruce up! Throw your shoulders back. Make folks think you're somebody." And she gave him a pocketful of printed cards, which bore this inscription:

  SPEND YOUR SUMMERS AT

  DIXIELAND

  In Beautiful Altamont,

  America's Switzerland.

  Rates Reasonable--Both Transient and Tourist.

  Apply Eliza E. Gant, Prop.

  "You've got to help me drum up some trade, if we're to live, boy," she said again, with the lip-pursing, mouth-tremulous jocularity that was coming to wound him so deeply, because he felt it was only an obvious mask for a more obvious insincerity.

  He writhed as he saw himself finally a toughened pachyderm in Eliza's world--sprucing up confidently, throwing his shoulders back proudly, making people "think he was somebody" as he cordially acknowledged an introduction by producing a card setting forth the joys of life in Altamont and at Dixieland, and seized every opening in social relations for the purpose of "drumming up trade." He hated the jargon of the profession, which she had picked up somewhere long before, and which she used constantly with such satisfaction--smacking her lips as she spoke of "transients," or of "drumming up trade." In him, as in Gant, there was a silent horror of selling for money the bread of one's table, the shelter of one's walls, to the guest, the stranger, the unknown friend from out the world; to the sick, the weary, the lonely, the broken, the knave, the harlot, and the fool.

  Thus, lost in the remote Ozarks, he wandered up Central Avenue, fringed on both sides by the swift-sloping hills, for him, by the borders of enchantment, the immediate portals of a land of timeless and never-ending faery. He drank endlessly the water that came smoking from the earth, hoping somehow to wash himself clean from all pollution, beginning his everlasting fantasy of the miraculous spring, or the bath, neck-high, of curative mud, which would draw out of a man's veins each drop of corrupted blood, dry up in him a cancerous growth, dwindle and absorb a cyst, remove all scorbutic blemishes, scoop and suck and thread away the fibrous slime of all disease, leaving him again with the perfect flesh of an animal.

  And he gazed for hours into the entrances of the fashionable hotels, staring at the ladies' legs upon the verandas, watching the great ones of the land at their recreations, thinking, with a pangof wonder, that here were the people of Chambers, of Phillips, of all the society novelists, leading their godlike lives in flesh, recording their fiction. He was deeply reverential before the grand manner of these books, particularly before the grand manner of the English books: there people loved, but not as other people, elegantly; their speech was subtle, delicate, exquisite; even in their passions there was no gross lust or strong appetite?they were incapable of the vile thoughts or the meaty desire of common people. As he looked at the comely thighs of the young women on horses, fascinated to see their shapely legs split over the strong good smell of a horse, he wondered if the warm sinuous vibration of the great horse-back excited them, and what their love was like. The preposterous elegance of their manner in the books awed him: he saw seduction consummated in kid gloves, to the accompaniment of subtle repartee. Such thoughts, when he had them, filled him with shame at his own baseness--he imagined for these people a love conducted beyond all the laws of nature, achieving the delight of animals or of common men by the electrical touch of a finger, the flicker of an eye, the intonation of a phrase--exquisitely and incorruptibly.

  And as they looked at his remote fabulous face, more strange now that its thick fringing curls had been shorn, they bought of him, paying him several times his fee, with the lazy penitence of wasters.

  Great fish within the restaurant windows swam in glass wells?eels coiled snakily, white-bellied trout veered and sank: he dreamed of strange rich foods within.

  And sometimes men returned in carriages from the distant river, laden with great fish, and he wondered if he would ever see that river. All that lay around him, near but unexplored, filled him with desire and longing.

  And later, again, along the sandy coast of Florida, with Eliza, he wandered down the narrow lanes of Saint Augustine, raced along the hard packed beach of Daytona, scoured the green lawns of Palm Beach, before the hotels, for coconuts, which Eliza desired as souvenirs, filling a brown tow sack with them and walking, with the bag hung from his shoulders, down the interminable aisles of the Royal Poinciana or the Breakers, target of scorn, and scandal, and amusement from slave and prince; or traversed the spacious palm-cool walks that cut the peninsula, to see, sprawled in the sensual loose sand the ladies' silken legs, the brown lean bodies of the men, the long seaplunges in the unending scroll-work of the emerald and infinite sea, which had beat in his brain from his father's shells, which had played at his mountain heart, but which never, until now, had he seen. Through the spattered sunlight of the palms, in the smooth walks, princess and lord were wheeled: in latticed bar-rooms, droning with the buzzing fans, men drank from glaCésar tall glasses.

  Or again, they came to Jacksonville, lived there for several weeks near Pett and Greeley; he studied under a little crippled man from Harvard, going to lunch with his teacher at a buffet, where the man consumed beer and pretzels. Eliza protested the tuition when she left: the cripple shrugged his shoulders, took what she had to offer. Eugene twisted his neck about, and lifted his foot from the ground.

  Thus did he see first, he the hill-bound, the sky-girt, of whom the mountains were his masters, the fabulous South. The picture of flashing field, of wood, and hill, stayed in his heart forever: lost in the dark land, he lay the night-long through within his berth, watching the shadowy and phantom South flash by, sleeping at length, and waking suddenly, to see cool lakes in Florida at dawn, standing quietly as if they had waited from eternity for this meeting; or hearing, as the train in the dark hours of morning slid into Savannah, the strange quiet voices of the men upon the platform, the boding faint echoes of the station, or seeing, in pale dawn, the phantom woods, a rutted lane, a cow, a boy, a drab, dull-eyed against a cottage door, glimpsed, at this moment of rushing time, for which all life had been a plot, to flash upon the window and be gone.

  The commonness of all things in the earth he remembered with a strange familiarity--he dreamed of the quiet roads, the moonlit woodlands, and he thought that some day he would come to them on foot, and find them there unchanged, in all the wonder of recognition. They had existed for him anciently and forever.

  Eugene was almost twelve years old.

  PART TWO

  14

  The plum-tree, black and brittle, rocks stiffly in winter wind. Her million little twigs are frozen in spears of ice. But in the Spring, lithe and heavy, she will bend under her great load of fruit and blossoms. She will grow young again. Red plums will ripen, will be shaken desperately upon the tiny stems. They will fall bursted on the loamy warm wet earth; when the wind blows in the orchard the air will be filled with dropping plums; the night will be filled with the sound of their d
ropping, and a great tree of birds will sing, burgeoning, blossoming richly, filling the air also with warm-throated plum-dropping bird-notes.

  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.

  At the Pisgah Hotel, opposite the station, the last door clicked softly; the stealthy footfalls of the night ceased; Miss Bernice Redmond gave the negro porter eight one-dollar bills and went definitely to bed with the request that she be not disturbed until one o'clock; a shifting engine slatted noisily about in the yard; past the Biltburn crossing To
m Cline whistled with even, mournful respirations. By this time Number 3 had delivered 142 of his papers; he had only to ascend the rickety wooden stairs of the Eagle Crescent bank to finish the eight houses of the Crescent. He looked anxiously across the hill-and-dale-sprawled negro settlement to the eastern rim: behind Birdseye Gap the sky was pearl-gray?the stars looked drowned. Not much time left, he thought. He had a blond meaty face, pale-colored and covered thickly with young blond hair. His jaw was long and fleshy: it sloped backward. He ran his tongue along his full cracked underlip.

  A 1910 model, four-cylinder, seven-passenger Hudson, with mounting steady roar, shot drunkenly out from the station curbing, lurched into the level negro-sleeping stretch of South End Avenue, where the firemen had their tournaments, and zipped townward doing almost fifty. The station quietly stirred in its sleep: there were faint reverberating noises under the empty sheds; brisk hammer-taps upon car wheels, metallic heel-clicks in the tiled waiting-room. Sleepily a negress slopped water on the tiles, with languid sullen movement pushing a gray sopping rag around the floor.

  It was now five-thirty. Ben had gone out of the house into the orchard at three twenty-five. In another forty minutes Gant would waken, dress, and build the morning fires.

  "Ben," said Harry Tugman, as they walked out of the relaxed office, "if Jimmy Dean comes messing around my press-room again they can get some one else to print their lousy sheet. What the hell! I can get a job on the Atlanta Constitution whenever I want it."