Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
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in the house.
He was wearing ragged from the affair and its consequences. He felt that he was being unfairly dealt with, but as the hammering went on he drew his head bullishly down and held his tongue, counting the hours until his holiday should end. He turned silently to Ben — he should have turned nowhere. But the trusted brother, frayed and bitter on his own accord, scowled bitterly, and gave him the harsh weight of his tongue. This finally was unendurable. He felt betrayed — utterly turned against and set upon.
The outbreak came three nights before his departure as he stood, tense and stolid, in the parlor. For almost an hour, in a savage monotone, Ben had tried deliberately, it seemed, to goad him to an attack. He had listened without a word, smothering in pain and fury, and enraging by his silence the older brother who was finding a vent for his own alien frustration.
“— and don’t stand there scowling at me, you little thug. I’m telling you for your own good. I’m only trying to keep you from being a jailbird, you know.”
“The trouble with you,” said Luke, “is that you have no appreciation for what’s been done for you. Everything’s been done for you, and you haven’t sense enough to appreciate it. Your college education has ruined you.”
The boy turned slowly on Ben.
“All right, Ben,” he muttered. “That’s enough, now. I don’t care what he says, but I’ve had enough of it from you.”
This was the admission the older one had wanted. They were all in very chafed and ugly temper.
“Don’t talk back to me, you little fool, or I’ll bat your brains out.”
The boy sprang at his brother like a cat, with a snarling cry. He bore him backward to the floor as if he were a child, laying him down gently and kneeling above him, because he had been instantly shocked by the fragility of his opponent and the ease of his advantage. He struggled with such mixed rage and shame as those who try quietly to endure the tantrum of a trying brat. As he knelt above Ben, holding his arms pinned, Luke fell heavily on his back, uttering excited cries, strangling him with one arm and cuffing awkwardly with the other.
“All right, B-B-Ben,” he chattered, “you grab his legs.”
A free scrimmage upon the floor followed, with such a clatter of upset scuttles, fire-irons, and chairs, that Eliza was brought at a fast gallop from the kitchen.
“Mercy!” she shrieked, as she reached the door. “They’ll kill him!”
But, although being subdued — in the proud language of an older South “defeated, sir, but never beaten”— Eugene was doing very well for his age, and continued to chill the spines of his enemies with strange noises in his larynx, even after they had all clambered panting to their feet.
“I f-f-f-fink he’s gone crazy,” said Luke. “He j-j-jumped on us without a word of warning.”
The hero replied to this with a drunken roll of the head, a furious dilation of the nostrils, and another horrible noise in his throat.
“What’s to become of us!” wept Eliza. “When brother strikes brother, it seems that the smash-up has come.” She lifted the padded arm-chair, and placed it on its legs again.
When he could speak, Eugene said quietly, to control the trembling of his voice:
“I’m sorry I jumped on you, Ben. You,” he said to the excited sailor, “jumped on my back like a coward. But I’m sorry for what’s happened. I’m sorry for what I did the other night and now. I said so, and you wouldn’t leave me alone. You’ve tried to drive me crazy with your talk. And I didn’t,” he choked, “I didn’t think you’d turn against me as you have. I know what the others are like — they hate me!”
“Hate you!” cried Luke excitedly. “For G-g-god’s sake! You talk like a fool. We’re only trying to help you, for your own good. Why should we hate you!”
“Yes, you hate me,” Eugene said, “and you’re ashamed to admit it. I don’t know why you should, but you do. You wouldn’t ever admit anything like that, but it’s the truth. You’re afraid of the right words. But it’s been different with you,” he said, turning to Ben. “We’ve been like brothers — and now, you’ve gone over against me.”
“Ah!” Ben muttered, turning away nervously. “You’re crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He lighted a cigarette, holding the match in a hand that trembled.
But although the boy had used a child’s speech of woe and resentment, they knew there was a core of truth in what he had said.
“Children, children!” said Eliza sadly. “We must try to love one another. Let’s try to get along together this Christmas — what time’s left. It may be the last one we’ll ever have together.” She began to weep: “I’ve had such a hard life,” she said, “it’s been strife and turmoil all the way. It does seem I deserve a little peace and happiness now.”
They were touched with the old bitter shame: they dared not look at one another. But they were awed and made quiet by the vast riddle of pain and confusion that scarred their lives.
“No one, ‘Gene,” Luke began quietly, “has turned against you. We want to help you — to see you amount to something. You’re the last chance — if booze gets you the way it has the rest of us, you’re done for.”
The boy felt very tired; his voice was flat and low. He began to speak with the bluntness of despair: what he said had undebatable finality.
“And how are you going to keep booze from getting me, Luke?” he said. “By jumping on my back and trying to strangle me? That’s on a level with every other effort you’ve ever made to know me.”
“Oh,” said Luke ironically, “you don’t think we understand you?”
“No,” Eugene said quietly. “I don’t think you do. You know nothing whatever about me. I know nothing about you — or any of you. I have lived here with you for seventeen years and I’m a stranger. In all that time have you ever talked to me like a brother? Have you ever told me anything of yourself? Have you ever tried to be a friend or a companion to me?”
“I don’t know what you want,” Luke answered, “but I thought I was acting for the best. As to telling you about myself, what do you want to know?”
“Well,” said Eugene slowly, “you’re six years older than I am: you’ve been away to school, you’ve worked in big cities, and you are now enlisted in the United States Navy. Why do you always act like God Almighty,” he continued with rankling bitterness. “I know what sailors do! You’re no better than I am! What about liquor? What about women?”
“That’s no way to talk before your mother,” said Luke sternly.
“No, son,” said Eliza in a troubled voice. “I don’t like that way of talking.”
“Then I won’t talk like that,” Eugene said. “But I had expected you to say that. We do not want to be told what we know. We do not want to call things by their names, although we’re willing to call one another bad ones. We call meanness nobility and hatred honor. The way to make yourself a hero is to make me out a scoundrel. You won’t admit that either, but it’s true. Well, then, Luke, we won’t talk of the ladies, black or white, you may or may not know, because it would make you uncomfortable. Instead, you can keep on being God and I’ll listen to your advice, like a little boy in Sunday School. But I’d rather read the Ten Commandments where it’s written down shorter and better.”
“Son,” said Eliza again with her ancient look of trouble and frustration, “we must try to get on together.”
“No,” he said. “Alone. I have done an apprenticeship here with you for seventeen years, but it is coming to an end. I know now that I shall escape; I know that I have been guilty of no great crime against you, and I am no longer afraid of you.”
“Why, boy!”