Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
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fourteen feet high. In the dim light, by one of these slender piers, already mined with crumbling ruins of wet brick, the scarecrow crouched, toiling with the thin grapevine of his arms against the temple.
“I will kill you, House,” he gasped. “Vile and accursed House, I will tear you down. I will bring you down upon the whores and boarders. I will wreck you, House.”
Another convulsion of his shoulders brought down a sprinkling rain of dust and rubble.
“I will make you fall down on all the people in you, House,” he said.
“Fool!” cried Ben, leaping upon him, “what are you trying to do?” He caught the boy’s arms from behind and dragged him back. “Do you think you can bring her back to you by wrecking the house? Are there no other women in the world, that you should let one get the best of you like this?”
“Let me go! Let me go!” said Eugene. “What does it matter to you?”
“Don’t think, fool, that I care,” said Ben fiercely. “You’re hurting no one but yourself. Do you think you’ll hurt the boarders by pulling the house down on your own head? Do you think, idiot, that any one cares if you kill yourself?” He shook the boy. “No. No. I don’t care what you do, you know. I simply want to save the family the trouble and expense of burying you.”
With a great cry of rage and bafflement Eugene tried to free himself. But the older brother held on as desperately as the Old Man of the Sea. Then, with a great effort of his hands and shoulders, the boy lifted his captor off the ground, and dashed him back against the white brick wall of the cellar. Ben collapsed, releasing him, with a fit of dry coughing, holding his hand against his thin breast.
“Don’t be a fool,” he gasped.
“Did I hurt you?” said Eugene dully.
“No. Go into the house and wash yourself. You ought to comb your hair once or twice a week, you know. You can’t go around like a wild man. Get something to eat. Have you any money?”
“Yes — I have enough.”
“Are you all right now?”
“Yes — don’t talk about it, please.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, fool. I want you to learn a little sense,” said Ben. He straightened, brushing his whitened coat. In a moment, he went on quietly: “To hell with them, ‘Gene. To hell with them all. Don’t let them worry you. Get all that you can. Don’t give a damn for anything. Nothing gives a damn for you. To hell with it all! To hell with it! There are a lot of bad days. There are a lot of good ones. You’ll forget. There are a lot of days. Let it go.”
“Yes,” said Eugene wearily, “let it go. It’s all right now. I’m too tired. When you get tired you don’t care, do you? I’m too tired to care. I’ll never care any more. I’m too tired. The men in France get tired and don’t care. If a man came and pointed a gun at me now, I wouldn’t be scared. I’m too tired.” He began to laugh, loosely, with a sense of delicious relief. “I don’t care for any one or anything. I’ve always been afraid of everything, but when I got tired I didn’t care. That’s how I shall get over everything. I shall get tired.”
Ben lighted a cigarette.
“That’s better,” he said. “Let’s get something to eat.” He smiled thinly. “Come along, Samson.”
They walked out slowly around the house.
He washed himself, and ate a hearty meal. The boarders finished, and wandered off into the darkness variously — some to the band-concert on the Square, some to the moving-pictures, some for walks through the town. When he had fed he went out on the porch. It was dark and almost empty save where, at the side, Mrs. Selborne sat in the swing with a wealthy lumber man from Tennessee. Her low rich laughter bubbled up softly from the vat of the dark. “Miss Brown” rocked quietly and decorously by herself. She was a heavily built and quietly dressed woman of thirty-nine years, touched with that slightly comic primness — that careful gentility — that marks the conduct of the prostitute incognito. She was being very refined. She was a perfect lady and would, if aroused, assert the fact.
“Miss Brown” lived, she said, in Indianapolis. She was not ugly: her face was simply permeated with the implacable dullness of the Mid–Westerner. In spite of the lewdness of her wide thin mouth, her look was smug. She had a fair mass of indifferent brown hair, rather small brown eyes, and a smooth russet skin.
“Pshaw!” said Eliza. “I don’t believe her name’s ‘Miss Brown’ any more than mine is.”
There had been rain. The night was cool and black; the flower-bed before the house was wet, with a smell of geraniums and drenched pansies. He lighted a cigarette, sitting upon the rail. “Miss Brown” rocked.
“It’s turned off cool,” she said. “That little bit of rain has done a lot of good, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was hot,” he said. “I hate hot weather.”
“I can’t stand it either,” she said. “That’s why I go away every summer. Out my way we catch it. You folks here don’t know what hot weather is.”
“You’re from Milwaukee, aren’t you?”
“Indianapolis.”
“I knew it was somewhere out there. Is it a big place?” he asked curiously.
“Yes. You could put Altamont in one corner of it and never miss it.”
“How big is it?” he said eagerly. “How many people have you there?”
“I don’t know exactly — over three hundred thousand with the suburbs.”
He reflected with greedy satisfaction.
“Is it pretty? Are there a lot of pretty houses and fine buildings?”
“Yes — I think so,” she said reflectively. “It’s a nice homelike place.”
“What are the people like? What do they do? Are they rich?”
“Why — yes. It’s a business and manufacturing place. There are a lot of rich people.”
“I suppose they live in big houses and ride around in big cars, eh?” he demanded. Then, without waiting for a reply, he went on: “Do they have good things to eat? What?”
She laughed awkwardly, puzzled and confused.
“Why, yes. There’s a great deal of German cooking. Do you like German cooking?”
“Beer!” he muttered lusciously. “Beer — eh? You make it out there?”
“Yes.” She laughed, with a voluptuous note in her voice. “I believe you’re a bad boy, Eugene.”
“And what about the theatres and libraries? You have lots of shows, don’t you?”
“Yes. A lot of good shows come to Indianapolis. All the big hits in New York and Chicago.”
“And a library — you have a big one, eh?”
“Yes. We have a nice library.”
“How many books has it?”
“Oh, I can’t say as to that. But it’s a good big library.”
“Over 100,000 books, do you suppose? They wouldn’t have half a million, would they?” He did not wait for an answer, he was talking to himself. “No, of course not. How many books can you take out at a time? What?”
The great shadow of his hunger bent over her; he rushed out of himself, devouring her with his questions.
“What are the girls like? Are they blonde or brunette? What?”
“Why, we have both kinds — more dark than fair, I should say.” She looked through the darkness at him, grinning.
“Are