Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
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On the Square the slackened fountain dropped a fat spire of freezing water into its thickening rim of ice. In summer, a tall spire blown in blue sheets of spray. When they turned it down it wilted — that was like a fountain, too. No wind blew.
His eyes fixed on the clean concrete walk, Gant strode on, muttering dramatically, composing a narrative of the picture. The cold steel of new sewing-machines glinted in dim light. The Singer building. Tallest in the world. The stitching hum of Eliza’s machine. Needle through your finger before you know it. He winced. They passed the Sluder Building at the corner of the Square and turned left. Gets over $700 a month in office-rent from this alone. The window on the corner was filled with rubber syringes and thermos bottles. Drink Coca Cola. They say he stole the formula from old mountain woman. $50,000,000 now. Rats in the vats. Dope at Wood’s better. Too weak here. He had recently acquired a taste for the beverage and drank four or five glasses a day.
D. Stern had his old shack on that corner twenty years before Fagg bought it. Belonged to Paston estate. Could have bought it for a song. Rich man now. D. moved to North Main now. The Jew’s rich. Fortune out of winnies. They’re hot, they’re hot. In a broken pot. If I had a little time I’d make a little rhyme. Thirteen kids — she had one every year. As broad as she’s long. They all get fat. Every one works. Sons pay father board. None of mine, I can assure you. The Jews get there.
The hunchback — what did they call him? One of Nature’s Cruel Jests. Ah, Lord! What’s become of old John Bunny? I used to like his pictures. Oh yes. Dead.
That pure look they have, at the end, when he kisses her, mused Eugene. Later — A Warmer Clime. Her long lashes curled down over her wet eyes, she was unable to meet his gaze. The sweet lips trembled with desire as, clasping her in a grip of steel, he bent down over her yielding body and planted hungry kisses on her mouth. When the purple canopy of dawn had been reft asunder by the rays of the invading sun. The Stranger. It wouldn’t do to say the next morning. They have a thick coat of yellow paint all over their face. Meanwhile, in Old England. I wonder what they say to each other. They’re a pretty tough lot, I suppose.
A swift thrust of conviction left him unperturbed. The other was better.
He thought of the Stranger. Steel-gray eyes. A steady face. An eighth of a second faster on the draw than any one else. Two-gun Bill Hart. Anderson of the Essanay. Strong quiet men.
He clapped his hand against his buttock with a sharp smack and shot the murderous forefinger at an ashcan, a lamp-post, and a barber-pole, with a snapping wrist. Gant, startled in composition, gave him a quick uneasy look. They walked on.
Came a day when Spring put forth her blossoms on the earth again. No, no — not that. Then all grew dark. Picture of a lily trampled on the earth. That means he bigged her. Art. Filled her with thee a baby fair. You can’t go away now. Why? Because — because — her eyes dropped shyly, a slow flush mantled her cheek. He stared at her blankly for a moment, then his puzzled gaze —(O good!)— fell to the tiny object she was fingering nervously, with dawning comprehension. Blushing rosily, she tried to conceal the little jacket behind her. Grace! A great light broke on him! Do you mean it? She went to him with a cry, half laugh, half sob, and buried her burning face in his neck. You silly boy. Of course I mean it (you bastard!). The little dance girl. Smiling with wet lechery and manipulating his moist rope of cigar, Faro Jim shuffled a pack of cards slowly and fixed on her his vulturesque eye. A knife in his shiny boots, a small derringer and three aces up his ruffled sleeve, and suave murder in his heart. But the cold gray eyes of the Stranger missed nothing. Imperturbably he drank his Scotch, wheeled from the mirror with barking Colt just one-sixth of a second before the gambler could fire. Faro coughed and slid forward slowly upon the floor.
There was no sound now in the crowded room of the Triple Y. Men stood petrified. The face of Bad Bill and the two Mexicans had turned a dirty gray. Finally, the sheriff spoke, turning with awe from the still figure on the sawdust floor.
“By God, stranger!” he ejaculated, “I never knew the man lived who could beat Faro to the draw. What’s yore name?”
“In the fam’ly Bible back home, pardner,” the Stranger drawled, “it’s Eugene Gant, but folks out here generally calls me The Dixie Ghost.”
There was a slow gasp of wonder from the crowd.
“Gawd!” some one whispered. “It’s the Ghost!”
As the Ghost turned coolly back to finish his interrupted drink, he found himself face to face with the little dancing girl. Two smoking globes of brine welled from the pellucid depths of her pure eyes and fell with a hot splash on his bronzed hand.
“How can I ever thank you!” she cried. “You have saved me from a fate far worse than death.”
But the Ghost, who had faced death many times without a flicker of a lash, was unable to face something he saw now in a pair of big brown eyes. He took off his sombrero and twisted it shyly in his big hands.
“Why, that’s all right, ma’am,” he gulped awkwardly. “Glad to be of service to a lady any time.”
By this time the two bartenders had thrown a table-cloth over Faro Bill, carried the limp body into the back room, and returned to their positions behind the bar. The crowd clustered about in little groups, laughing and talking excitedly, and in a moment, as the pianist began to hammer out a tune on the battered piano, broke into the measures of a waltz.
In the wild West of those days, passions were primitive, vengeance sudden, and retribution immediate.
Two dimples sentinelled a platoon of milk-white teeth.
“Won’t you dance with me, Mr. Ghost?” she coaxed.
Thoughtfully he pondered on love’s mystery. Pure but passionate. Appearances against her, ’tis true. The foul breath of slander. She worked in a bawdy-house but her heart was clean. Outside of that, what can one say against her? He thought pleasantly of murder. With child’s eyes he regarded his extinct enemies. Men died violently but cleanly, in the movies. Bang-bang. Good-by, boys, I’m through. Through the head or heart — a clean hole, no blood. He had kept innocency. Do their guts or their brains come spilling out? Currant jelly where a face was, the chin shot off. Or down there that other — His arm beat the air like a wing: he writhed. If you lose that? Done, die. He clutched his throat in his anguish.
They bent down eastward along Academy Street, having turned right from the little caudal appendage that gave on the northeastern corner of the Square. The boy’s mind flamed with bright streaming images, sharp as gems, mutable as chameleons. His life was the shadow of a shadow, a play within a play. He became the hero-actor-star, the lord of the cinema, and the lover of a beautiful movie-queen, as heroic as his postures, with a superior actuality for every make-believe. He was the Ghost and he who played the Ghost, the cause that minted legend into fact.
He was those heroes whom he admired, and the victor, in beauty, nobility, and sterling worth, over those whom he despised because they always triumphed and were forever good and pretty and beloved of women. He was chosen and beloved of a bevy of internationally renowned beauties, vampires and pure sweet girls alike, with fruity blondes in the lead, all contesting for his favors, and some of the least scrupulous resorting to underhand practices in order to win him. Their pure eyes turned up to him in everlasting close-ups: he feasted virtuously upon their proffered lips and, conflict over, murder sanctified, and virtue crowned, walked away with his siren into the convenient blaze of a constantly setting sun.
With burning sidelong face he looked quickly up at Gant, twisting his convulsive neck.
Across the street, a calcium glare from the corner light bathed coldly the new brick facade of the Orpheum Theatre. All This Week Gus Nolan and His Georgia Peaches. Also the Piedmont Comedy Four and Miss Bobbie Dukane.
The theatre was dark, the second show was over. They stared curiously across the street at the posters. In this cold silence where were the Peaches? At the Athens now, upon the Square. They always went there after. Gant looked at his watch. 11:12. Big Bill Messier outside swinging his club and watching them. On the counter stools