YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN. Thomas Wolfe
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listened or not so long as the puppets of an audience were before her. “You see what they’re goin’ to do here, don’t you? Why, Fred Barnes, Roy Simms, and Mack Judson — all that crowd — why, yes — here! — say!”— she cried, frowning meditatively —“wasn’t I reading it? Didn’t it all come out in the paper — why, here, you know, a week or two ago — how they proposed to tear down that whole block of buildings there and were goin’ to put up the finest garage in this part of the country? Oh, it will take up the whole block, you know, with a fine eight-storey building over it, and storage space upstairs for more cars, and doctors’ offices — why, yes! — they’re even thinkin’ of puttin’ in a roof garden and a big restaurant on top. The whole thing will cost ’em over half a million dollars before they’re done with it — oh, paid two thousand dollars a foot for every inch of it!” she cried. “But pshaw! Why those are Main Street prices — you can get business property up in the centre of town for that! I could’ve told ’em-but hm!”— with a scornful little tremor of the head —“they didn’t want it anywhere but here — no, sir! They’ll be lucky if they get out with their skins!”
George and Margaret offered no comment, but Mrs. Flood appeared not to notice, and as the procession crossed the bridge and turned into Preston Avenue she went on:
“See that house and lot over there! I paid twenty-five thousand for it two years ago, and now it’s worth fifty thousand if it’s worth a penny. Yes, and I’ll get it, too. But pshaw! See here!”— she shook her head emphatically. “They couldn’t pull a trick like that on me! I saw what he was up to! Yes! Didn’t Mack Judson come to me? Didn’t he try to trade with me? Oh, here along, you know, the first part of last April,” she said impatiently, with a dismissing gesture of her hand, as if all this must be perfectly clear to everyone. “All that crowd that’s in with him — they were behind him — I could see it plain as day. Says: ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. We know you’re a good trader, we respect your judgment, and we want you in,’ he says, ‘and just to have you with us, why, I’ll trade you three fine lots I own up there on Pinecrest Road in Ridgewood for that house and lot of yours on Preston Avenue.’ Says: ‘You won’t have to put up a cent. Just to get you in with us I’ll make you an even swap!’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s mighty fine of you, Mack, and I appreciate the compliment. If you want that house and lot on Preston Avenue,’ I said, ‘why, I reckon I can let you have it. You know my price,’ I said. ‘It’s fifty thousand. What are those lots in Ridgewood worth?’— came right out and asked him, you know. ‘Why,’ he says, ‘it’s hard to say. I don’t know just exactly what they are worth,’ he says. ‘The property up there is goin’ up all the time.’ I looked him straight in the eye and said to him: ‘Well, Mack, I know what those lots are worth, and they’re not worth what you paid for ’em. The town’s movin’ the other way. So if you want my house and lot,’ I said, ‘just bring me the cash and you can have it. But I won’t swap with you.’ That’s exactly what I told him, and of course that was the end of it. He’s never mentioned it again. Oh, yes, I saw what he was up to, all right.”
Nearing the cemetery, the line of cars passed a place where an unpaved clay road went upwards among fields towards some lonely pines. The dirt road, at the point where it joined the main highway, was flanked by two portalled shapes of hewn granite blocks set there like markers of a splendid city yet unbuilt which would rise grandly from the hills that swept back into the green wilderness from the river. But now this ornate entrance and a large billboard planted in the field were the only evidences of what was yet to be. Mrs. Flood saw the sign.
“Hah? What’s that?” she cried out in a sharply startled tone. “What does it say there?”
They all craned their necks to see it as they passed, and George read aloud the legend on the sign:
RIVERCREST DEDICATED TO ALL THE PEOPLE OF THIS SECTION AND TO THE GLORY OF THE GREATER CITY THEY WILL BUILD
Mrs. Flood took in the words with obvious satisfaction. “Ah-hah!” she said, nodding her head slowly, with deliberate agreement. “That’s just exactly it!”
Margaret nudged George and whispered in his ear:
“Dedicated!” she muttered scornfully — then, with mincing refinement: “Now ain’t that nice? Dedicated to cutting your throat and bleeding you white of every nickel that you’ve got!”
They were now entering the cemetery, and the procession wound slowly in along a circling road and at length came to a halt near the rounded crest of the hill below the Joyner burial plot. At one corner of the plot a tall locust tree was growing, and beneath its shade all the Joyners had been buried. There was the family monument — a square, massive chunk of grey, metallic granite, brilliantly burnished, with “JOYNER” in raised letters upon its shining surface. On the ends were inscriptions for old Lafayette and his wife, with their names and dates; and, grouped about them, in parallel rows set on the gentle slope, were the graves of Lafayette’s children. All these had smaller individual monuments, and on each of these, below the name and dates of birth and death, was some little elegiac poem carved in a Bowing script.
At one side of the burial plot the new-dug grave gaped darkly in the raw earth, and beside it was a mound of loose yellow clay. Ranged above it on the hill were several rows of folding chairs. Towards these the people, who were now getting out of the cars, began to move.
Mark and Mag and various other Joyners took the front rows, and George and Margaret, with Mrs. Flood still close beside them, found chairs at the back. Other people — friends, distant relatives, and mere acquaintances — stood in groups behind.
The lot looked out across a mile or two of deep, dense green, the wooded slopes and hollows that receded towards the winding river, and straight across beyond the river was the central business part of town. The spires and buildings, the old ones as well as some splendid new ones — hotels, office buildings, garages, churches, and the scaffolding and concrete of new construction which exploded from the familiar design with glittering violence — were plainly visible. It was a fine view.
While the people took their places and waited for the pallbearers to perform their last slow and heavy service up the final ascent of the hill, Mrs. Flood sat with her hands folded in her lap and gazed out over the town. Then she began shaking her head thoughtfully, her lips pursed in deprecation and regret, and in a low voice, as if she were talking to herself, she said:
“Hm! Hm! Hm! Too bad, too bad, too bad!”
“What’s that, Mrs. Flood?” Margaret leaned over and whispered. “What’s too bad?”
“Why, that they should ever have chosen such a place as this for the cemetery,” she said regretfully. She had lowered her voice to a stage whisper, and those round her could hear everything she said. “Why, as I told Frank Candler just the other day, they’ve gone and deliberately given away the two best building sites in town to the niggers and the dead people! That’s just exactly what they’ve done! I’ve always said as much — that the two finest building sites in town for natural beauty are Niggertown and Highview Cemetery. I could’ve told ’em that long years ago — they should’ve known it themselves if any of ’em could have seen an inch beyond his nose — that some day the town would grow up and this would be valuable property! Why, why on earth! When they were lookin’ for a cemetery site — why on earth didn’t they think of findin’ one up there on Buxton Hill, say, where you get a beautiful view, and where land is not so valuable? But this!” she whispered loudly. “This, by rights, is building property! People could have fine homes here! And as for the niggers, I’ve always said that they’d have been better off if they’d been put down there on those old flats in the depot section. Now it’s too late, of course — nothin’ can be done — but it was certainly a serious mistake!” she whispered, and shook her head. “I’ve always known it!”
“Well, I guess you’re right,” Margaret whispered in reply. “I never thought of it before, but I guess you’re right.” And she nudged George with her elbow.
The pallbearers had set the coffin in its place, and the minister now began to read the brief and movingly