Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
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“They get all that’s coming to them. He doesn’t seem to be starving, does he?”
“No,” said Eugene, “he doesn’t.”
“He lives on the fat of the land,” said George Graves. “Wine at every meal. There are some rich Catholics in this town.”
“Yes,” said Eugene. “Frank Moriarty’s got a pot full of money that he made selling licker.”
“Don’t let them hear you,” said George Graves, with a surly laugh. “They’ve got a family tree and a coat of arms already.”
“A beer-bottle rampant on a field of limburger cheese, gules,” said Eugene.
“They’re trying to get the Princess Madeleine into Society,” said George Graves.
“Hell fire!” Eugene cried, grinning. “Let’s let her in, if that’s all she wants. We belong to the Younger Set, don’t we?”
“You may,” said George Graves, reeling with laughter, “but I don’t. I wouldn’t be caught dead with the little pimps.”
“Mr. Eugene Gant was the host last night at a hot wienie roast given to members of the local Younger Set at Dixieland, the beautiful old ancestral mansion of his mother, Mrs. Eliza Gant.”
George Graves staggered. “You oughtn’t to say that, ‘Gene,” he gasped. He shook his head reproachfully. “Your mother’s a fine woman.”
“During the course of the evening, the Honorable George Graves, the talented scion of one of our oldest and wealthiest families, the Chesterfield Graveses, ($10 a week and up), rendered a few appropriate selections on the jews-harp.”
Pausing deliberately, George Graves wiped his streaming eyes, and blew his nose. In the windows of Bain’s millinery store, a waxen nymph bore a confection of rakish plumes upon her false tresses, and extended her simpering fingers in elegant counterpoise. Hats For Milady. O that those lips had language.
At this moment, with a smooth friction of trotting rumps, the death-wagon of Rogers–Malone turned swiftly in from the avenue, and wheeled by on ringing hoofs. They turned curiously and watched it draw up to the curb.
“Another Redskin bit the dust,” said George Graves.
Come, delicate death, serenely arriving, arriving.
“Horse” Hines came out quickly on long flapping legs, and opened the doors behind. In another moment, with the help of the two men on the driver’s seat, he had lowered the long wicker basket gently, and vanished, quietly, gravely, into the fragrant gloom of his establishment.
As Eugene watched, the old fatality of place returned. Each day, he thought, we pass the spot where some day we must die; or shall I, too, ride dead to some mean building yet unknown? Shall this bright clay, the hill-bound, die in lodgings yet unbuilt? Shall these eyes, drenched with visions yet unseen, stored with the viscous and interminable seas at dawn, with the sad comfort of unfulfilled Arcadias, seal up their cold dead dreams upon a tick, as this, in time, in some hot village of the plains?
He caught and fixed the instant. A telegraph messenger wheeled vigorously in from the avenue with pumping feet, curved widely into the alley at his right, jerking his wheel up sharply as he took the curb and coasted down to the delivery boy’s entrance. And post o’er land and ocean without rest. Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
Descending the dark stairs of the Medical Building slowly, Mrs. Thomas Hewitt, the comely wife of the prominent attorney (of Arthur, Hewitt, and Grey), turned out into the light, and advanced slowly toward the avenue. She was greeted with flourishing gestures of the hat by Henry T. Merriman (Merriman and Merriman), and Judge Robert C. Allan, professional colleagues of her husband. She smiled and shot each quickly with a glance. Pleasant is this flesh. When she had passed they looked after her a moment. Then they continued their discussion of the courts.
On the third floor of the First National Bank building on the right hand corner, Fergus Paston, fifty-six, a thin lecherous mouth between iron-gray dundrearies, leaned his cocked leg upon his open window, and followed the movements of Miss Bernie Powers, twenty-two, crossing the street. Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
On the opposite corner, Mrs. Roland Rawls, whose husband was manager of the Peerless Pulp Company (Plant No. 3), and whose father owned it, emerged from the rich seclusion of Arthur N. Wright, jeweller. She clasped her silver mesh-bag and stepped into her attendant Packard. She was a tall black-haired woman of thirty-three with a good figure: her face was dull, flat, and Mid-western.
“She’s the one with the money,” said George Graves. “He hasn’t a damn thing. It’s all in her name. She wants to be an opera singer.”
“Can she sing?”
“Not worth a damn,” said George Graves. “I’ve heard her. There’s your chance, ‘Gene. She’s got a daughter about your age.”
“What does she do?” said Eugene.
“She wants to be an actress,” said George Graves, laughing throatily.
“You have to work too damn hard for your money,” said Eugene.
They had reached the corner by the Bank, and now halted, indecisively, looking up the cool gulch of afternoon. The street buzzed with a light gay swarm of idlers: the faces of the virgins bloomed in and out like petals on a bough. Advancing upon him, an inch to the second, Eugene saw, ten feet away, the heavy paralyzed body of old Mr. Avery. He was a very great scholar, stone-deaf, and seventy-eight years old. He lived alone in a room above the Public Library. He had neither friends nor connections. He was a myth.
“Oh, my God!” said Eugene. “Here he comes!”
It was too late for escape.
Gasping a welcome, Mr. Avery bore down on him, with a violent shuffle of his feet and a palsied tattoo of his heavy stick which brought him over the intervening three yards in forty seconds.
“Well, young fellow,” he panted, “how’s Latin?”
“Fine,” Eugene screamed into his pink ear.
“Poeta nascitur, non fit,” said Mr. Avery, and went off into a silent wheeze of laughter which brought on a fit of coughing strangulation. His eyes bulged, his tender pink skin grew crimson, he roared his terror out in a phlegmy rattle, while his goose-white hand trembled frantically for his handkerchief. A crowd gathered. Eugene quickly drew a dirty handkerchief from the old man’s pocket, and thrust it into his hands. He tore up from his convulsed organs a rotting mass, and panted rapidly for breath. The crowd dispersed somewhat dejectedly.
George Graves grinned darkly. “That’s too bad,” he said. “You oughtn’t to laugh, ‘Gene.” He turned away, gurgling.
“Can you conjugate?” gasped Mr. Avery. “Here’s the way I learned:
“Amo, amas,
I love a lass.
Amat,
He loves her, too.”
Quivering with tremors of laughter, he launched himself again. Because he could not leave them, save by the inch, they moved off several yards to the curb. Grow old along with me!
“That’s a damn shame,” said George Graves, looking after him and shaking his head. “Where’s he going?”
“To supper,” said Eugene.
“To supper!” said George Graves. “It’s only four o’clock. Where does he eat?”
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.
“At the Uneeda,” said Eugene, beginning to choke, “It takes him two hours to get there.”
“Does he go every day?” said George Graves, beginning to laugh.
“Three times a day,” Eugene screamed. “He spends all