The Web and the Rock - Thomas Wolfe Read online

  "What, Aunt Maw?"

  "Why, that he was waitin' for his wound to heal, but, pshaw!"- she spoke quietly, shaking her head--"Sam was lazy--oh, the laziest feller I ever saw in all my life!" she cried. "Now if the truth were told, that was all that was wrong with him--and let me tell you something; it didn't take long for him to get well when he saw the war was comin' to an end and he wouldn't have to go on back and join the rest of them.

  He was limpin' around there one day leanin' on a cane as if every step would be his last, and the next day he was walkin' around as if he didn't have an ache or a pain in the world....

  "'That's the quickest recovery I ever heard of, Sam,' father said to him. 'Now if you've got some more medicine out of that same bottle, I just wish you'd let me have a little of it.'--Well, then, so Sam was there." She went on in a moment, "And of course Bill Joyner was there -old Bill Joyner, your great-grandfather, boy--as hale and hearty an old man as you'll ever see!" she cried.

  " Bill Joyner... why he must have been all of eighty-five right then, but you'd never have known it to look at him! Do anything! Go anywhere! Ready for anything!" she declared. "And he was that way, sir, right up to the hour of his death--lived over here in Libya Hill then, mind you, fifty miles away, but if he took a notion that he'd like to talk to one of his childern, why he'd stand right out and come, with out waitin' to get his hat or anything. Why yes! didn't he turn up one day just as we were all settin' down to dinner, without a hat or coat or anything!" she said. "'Why, what on earth!' said mother. 'Where did you come from, Uncle Bill?'--she called him Uncle Bill, you know.

  'Oh, I came from Libya Hill,' says he. 'Yes, but how did you get here?' she says--asks him, you know. 'Oh, I walked it,' he says. 'Why, you know you didn't!' mother says, 'And where's your hat and coat?' she says. 'Oh, I reckon I came without 'em,' he says, 'I was out workin' in my garden and I just took a notion that I'd come to see you all, so I didn't stop to get my hat or coat,' he said, 'I just came on!' And that's just exactly what he'd done, sir," she said with a deliberate emphasis.

  "He just took the notion that he'd like to see us all, and he lit right out, without stoppin' to say hello or howdy-do to anybody!"

  She paused for a moment, reflecting. Then, nodding her head slightly, in confirmation, she concluded: "But that was Bill Joyner for you! That's just the kind of feller that he was."

  "So he was there that day?" said George.

  "Yes, sir. He was right there standin' next to father. Father was a Major, you know," she said, with a strong note of pride in her voice, "but he was home on leave at the time the war ended. Why yes! he came home every now and then all through the war. Bein' a Major, I guess he could get off more than the common soldiers," she said proudly. "So he was there, with old Bill Joyner standin' right beside him. Bill, of course--he'd come because he wanted to see Rance, and he knew he'd be comin' back with all the rest of them. Of course, child," she said, shaking her head slightly, "none of us had seen your great-uncle Rance since the beginning of the war. He had enlisted at the very start, you know, when war was declared, and he'd been away the whole four years. And oh! they told it, you know, they told it!" she half-muttered, shaking her head slightly with a boding kind of deprecation, "what he'd been through--the things he'd had to do- whew-w!" she said suddenly with an expostulation of disgust--"Why, the time they took him prisoner, you know, and he escaped, and had to do his travelin' by night, sleepin' in barns or hidin' away somewheres in the woods all day, I reckon--and that was the time--whew-w!-

  'Go away,' I said, 'it makes me shudder when I think of it!'--why that he found that old dead mule they'd left there in the road--and cut him off a steak and eaten it--'And the best meat,' says, 'I ever tasted!'-

  Now that will give you some idea of how hungry he must have been!

  "Well, of course, we'd heard these stories, and none of us had seen him since he went away, so we were all curious to know. Well, here they came, you know, marchin' along on that old river road, and you could hear all the people cheerin', and the men a-shoutin' and the women folks a-cryin', and here comes Bob Patten. Well then, of course we all began to ask him about Rance, said, 'Where is he? Is he here?'

  "'Oh, yes, he's here, all right,' said Bob, 'He'll be along in a minute now. You'll see him--and if you don't see him'"--suddenly she began to laugh--"'if you don't see him,' says Bob, 'why, by God, you'll smell him!' That's just the way he put it, you know, came right out with it, and of course, they had to laugh.... But, child, child!" with strong distaste she shook her head slightly--"That awful--oh! that awful, awful, odor! Poor feller! I don't reckon he could help it! But he al ways had it.... Now he was clean enough!" she cried out with a strong emphasis, "Rance always kept himself as clean as anyone you ever saw. And a good, clean-livin' man, as well," she said. "Never touched a drop of licker in all his life," she said decisively, "No, sir- neither him nor father.--Oh father! father!" she cried proudly, "Why father wouldn't let anyone come near him with the smell of licker on his breath! And let me tell you something!" she said solemnly, "If he had known that your papa drank, he'd never have let your mother marry him!--Oh! he wouldn't have let him enter his house, you know -he would have considered it a disgrace for any member of his family to associate with anyone who drank!" she proudly said. "And Rance was the same--he couldn't endure the sight or taste of it--but oh!" she gasped, "that awful, awful odor--that old, rank body-smell that nothing could take out!--awful, awful," she whispered. Then for a moment she stitched silently. "And of course," she said, "that's what they say about him--that's what they called him-----"

  "What, Aunt Maw?"

  "Why," she said--and here she paused again, shaking her head in a movement of strong deprecation, "to think of it!--to think, they'd have no more decency or reverence than to give a man a name like that! But, then, you know what soldiers are--I reckon they're a pretty rough, coarse-talkin' lot, and of course they told it on him--that was the name they gave him, the one they called him by."

  "What?"

  She looked at him quietly for a moment with a serious face, then laughed.

  "Stinkin' Jesus," she said shyly. "Whew-w!" she gently shrieked.

  "'Oh, you know they wouldn't say a thing like that!' I cried--but that was it, all right. To think of it!... And of course, poor fellow, he knew it, he recognized it, says, 'I'd do anything in the world if I could only get rid of it,' says, 'I reckon it's a cross the Lord has given me to bear.'... But there it was--that--old--rank--thing!--Oh, awful, awful!" she whispered, peering downward at the needle. "And say! yes! Didn't he tell us all that day when he came back that the Day of Judgment was already here upon us?--Oh! said Appomattox Court house marked the comin' of the Lord and Armageddon--and for us all to get ready for great changes! And, yes! don't I remember that old linen chart--or map, I reckon you might call it--that he kept strung around his neck, all rolled up in a ball, and hangin' from a string? It proved, you know, by all the facts and figures in the Bible that the world was due to end in 1865.... And there he was, you know, marchin' along the road with all the rest of them, with that old thing a-hangin' round his neck, the day they all came back from the war."

  She stitched quietly with deft, strong fingers for a moment, and then, shaking her head, said sadly: "Poor Rance! But I tell you what! He was certainly a good man," she said.

  Rance Joyner had been the youngest of all old Bill Joyner's children.

  Rance was a good twelve years the junior of Lafayette, George Webber's grandfather. Between them had been born two other brothers-

  John, killed at the battle of Shiloh, and Sam. The record of Rance Joyner's boyhood, as it had survived by tongue, by hearsay, which was the only record these men had, was bare enough in its anatomy, but probably fully accurate.

  "Well, now I tell you how it was," Aunt Maw said. "The rest of them used to tease him and make fun of him. Of course, he was a simple-minded sort of feller, and I reckon he'd believe anything they told him. Why, yes! Didn't father tell me how they
told him Martha Alexander was in love with him, and got him to believin' it, and all!-

  And here Martha, you know, was the belle of the neighborhood, and could pick and choose from anyone she liked! But didn't they write him all sorts of fool love letters then, pretendin' to come from Martha, and tellin' him to meet her at all sorts of places--up on the Indian Mound, and down in the holler, or at some old stump, or tree, or crossroads--oh! anywheres!" she cried, "just to see if he'd be fool enough to go! And then, when she didn't turn up, wouldn't they write him another letter, sayin' her father was suspicious and watchin' her like a hawk! And didn't they tell him then that Martha had said she'd like him better if he grew a beard! And then they told him, you know, they had a special preparation all fixed up that would make his beard grow faster if he washed his face in it, and then didn't they persuade him to wash his face in old blue indigo water that was used to dye wool in, and didn't he go around there for weeks as blue in the face as a monkey!...

  "And didn't he come creepin' up behind her after church one day, and whisper in her car: 'I'll be there. Just swing the light three times and slip out easy when you're ready, and I'll be there waitin' for you!'-

  Why, he almost frightened the poor girl out of her wits. 'Oh!' she screamed, you know, and hollered for them to come and get him, 'Oh!

  Take him! Take him away!'--thinkin' he'd gone crazy--and of course that let the cat out of the bag. They had to tell it then, the joke they'd played on him." She smiled quietly, shaking her head slightly, with the sad and faintly troubled mirth of things far and lost.

  "But, I want to tell you," she said gravely in a moment, "they can say all they like about your great-uncle Rance, but he was always an upright and honest man. He had a good heart," she said quietly, and in these words there was an accolade. "He was always willin' to do anything he could to help people when they needed it. And he wouldn't wait to be asked, neither! Why, didn't they tell it how he practically carried Dave Ingram on his back as they retreated from Antietam, rather than let him lay there and be taken!--Of course, he was strong- why, strong as a mule!" she cried. "He could stand anything.--They told it how he could march all day long, and then stay up all night nursin' the sick and tendin' to the wounded."

  She paused and shook her head. "I guess he'd seen some awful things," she said. "I reckon he'd been with many a poor feller when he breathed his last--they had to admit it, sir, when they came back!

  Now, they can laugh at him all they please, but they had to give him his due! Jim Alexander said, you know, he admitted it, 'Well, Rance has preached the comin' of the Lord and a better day upon the earth, and I reckon we've all laughed at him at times for doin' it--but let me tell you, now,' he says, 'he always practiced what he preached. If everybody had as good a heart as he's got, we'd have that better day he talks about right now!'"

  She sewed quietly for a moment, thrusting the needle through with her thimbled finger, drawing the thread through with a strong, pulling movement of her arm.

  "Now, child, I'm goin' to tell you something," she said quietly.

  "There are a whole lot of people in this world who think they're pretty smart--but they never find out anything. Now I suppose that there are lots of smarter people in the world than Rance--I guess they looked on him as sort of simple-minded--but let me tell you something! It's not always the smartest people who know the most--and there are things I could tell you--things I know about!" she whispered with an omened tone, then fell to shaking her head slightly again, her face contracted in a portentous movement--"Child! Child!... I don't know what you'd call it... what explanation you could give for it- but it's mighty strange when you come to think about it, isn't it?"

  "But what? What is it, Aunt Maw?" he demanded feverishly.

  She turned and looked him full in the face for a moment. Then she whispered: "He's been--Seen!... I Saw him once myself!... He's been Seen all through his life," she whispered again. "I know a dozen people who have Seen him," she added quietly. She stitched in silence for a time.

  "Well, I tell you," she presently said, "the first time that they Saw him he was a boy--oh! I reckon along about eight or nine years old at the time. I've heard father tell the story many's the time," she said, "and mother was there and knew about it, too. That was the very year that they were married, sir, that's exactly when it was," she declared triumphantly. "Well, mother and father were still livin' there in Zebulon, and old Bill Joyner was there, too. He hadn't yet moved into town, you know. Oh, it was several years after this before Bill came to Libya Hill to live, and father didn't follow him till after the war was over.... Well, anyway," she said, "Bill was still out in Zebulon, as I was sayin', and the story goes that it was Sunday morning. So after breakfast the whole crowd of them start out for church--all of them except old Bill, you know, and I reckon he had something else to do, or felt that it was all right for him to stay at home so long as all the others went.... Well, anyhow," she smiled, "Bill didn't go to church, but he saw them go, you know! He saw them go!" she cried. "He stood there in the door and watched them as they went down the road--father and Sam and mother, and your great-uncle Rance. Well, anyway, when they had gone--I reckon it was some time later--Bill went out into the kitchen. And when he got there he saw the lid of the wool-box was open. Of course father was a hatter, and he kept the wool from which he made the felt out in the kitchen in this big box.-

  Why, it was big enough for a grown man to stretch out full length in, with some to spare, and of course it was as good a bed as anyone could want. I know that when father wanted to take a nap on Sunday after noons, or get off somewheres by himself to study something over, he'd go back and stretch out on the wool.

  "'Well,' thinks Bill, 'now who could ever have gone and done such a trick as that? Fate told them'--that's what he called my father, Lafayette, you know--'Fate told them to keep that box closed,' and he walks over, you know, to put the lid down--and there he was, sir!" she cried strongly--"There he was, if you please, stretched out on the wool and fast asleep--why, Rance, you know! Rance! There he was!

  ... 'Aha!' thinks Bill, 'I caught you that time, didn't I? Now he's just sneaked off from all the others when he thought my back was turned, and he's crawled back here to have a snooze when he's sup posed to be in church.' That's what Bill thought, you know. 'Now if he thinks he's goin' to play any such trick as that on me, he's very much mistaken. But we'll see,' thinks Bill, 'We'll just wait and see.

  Now, I'm not goin' to wake him up,' says Bill, 'I'll go away and let him sleep--but when the others all get back from church I'm goin' to ask him where he's been. And if he tells the truth--if he confesses that he crawled into the wool-box for a nap, I won't punish him. But if he tries to lie out of it,' says Bill, 'I'll give him such a thrashin' as he's never had in all his life before!'

  "So he goes away then and leaves Rance there to sleep. Well, he waited then, and pretty soon they all came back from church, and, sure enough, here comes Rance, trailin' along with all the rest of them.

  'Rance,' says Bill, 'How'd you like the sermon?'

  'Oh,' says Rance, smilin' an' grinnin' all over, you know, 'it was fine, father, fine,' he says. 'Fine, was it?' Bill says, 'You enjoyed it, did you?'

  'Oh, why, yes!' he says, 'I enjoyed it fine!'

  'Well, now, that's good,' says Bill, 'I'm glad to hear that,' says he. 'What did the preacher talk about?' he says.

  "Well, then, you know, Rance started in to tell him--he went through the preacher's sermon from beginnin' to end, he told him everything that was in it, even to describin' how the preacher talked and all.

  "And Bill listened. He didn't say a word. He waited till Rance got through talkin'. Then he looked at him, and shook his head. 'Rance,' he says, 'I want you to look me in the eye.' And Rance looked at him, you know, real startled-like; says, 'Why, yes, father, what is it? What's wrong?' he says. Then Bill looked at him, and shook his head. Says, 'Rance, Rance, I'd have let you go if you had told the truth about it, but,' says, 'Rance--you have
lied to me.'

  'Why, no, father,' says Rance, 'No, I haven't. What do you mean?' he says. And Bill looked at him; says, 'Rance--you have not been to church,' says, 'I found you in the wool-box fast asleep, and that is where you've been all morning. Now,' says Bill, 'you come with me,' and took him by the shoulder. "Oh, father, I haven't done anything--begins to cry, you know, says, 'Don't whip me, don't whip me--I haven't lied to you--I'll swear to you I haven't.'

  'You come with me,' says Bill--begins to pull and drag him along, you know, 'and when I'm through with you you'll never lie to me again.'

  "And that," she said, "that was where father--my father, your grand father--stepped into the picture. He stepped between them and stopped Bill Joyner from going any further. Of course, father was a grown man at the time. 'No,' says father, 'you mustn't do that,' he says, 'You're makin' a mistake. You can't punish him for not attendin' church to day.'

  'Why, what's the reason I can't?' Bill Joyner said. 'Because,' said father, 'he was there. He's been with us every minute of the time since we left home this morning. And he heard the sermon,' father said, 'He's tellin' you the truth--I'll swear to that--because he was sittin' next to me all the time.'

  "And then, of course, the others all chimed in, mother and Sam, said, 'Yes, he's tellin' you the truth, all right. He was right there with us all the time, and we'd have known if he left us.' Then Bill was bit ter against them all, of course, thinkin' they had all joined against him in an effort to shield Rance in a lie. 'To think,' he said, 'that childern of mine would turn against me in this way! To think that you'd all join together in a lie in order to shield him. Why, you're worse than he is,' he said, 'for you're abettin' him and leadin' him on, and you--' he said to father--'you are certainly old enough to know better,' says, 'Fate, I didn't think it of you, I didn't think you'd help him to lie like this.' And father said, 'No.' He looked him in the eye, said, 'No, father, no one is helpin' him to lie. He's not tellin' you a lie.