OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe
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city-bringer — hail!
To you, also, old glint of demon hawk-eyes on the rail and the dark gloved hand of cunning — you, there, old bristle-crops! — Tom Wilson, H. F. Cline, or T. J. Johnson — whatever the hell your name is —
CASEY JONES! Open the throttle, boy, and let her rip! Boys, I’m a belly-busting bastard from the State of old Catawba — a rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ son-of-a-bitch from Saw Tooth Gap in Buncombe — why, God help this lovely bastard of a train — it is the best damned train that ever turned a wheel since Casey Jones’s father was a pup — why, you sweet bastard, run! Eat up Virginia! — Give her the throttle, you old goggle-eyed son-of-a-bitch up there! — Pour it to her! Let ‘er have it, you nigger-Baptist bastard of a shovelling fireman — let ‘er rip! — Wow! By God, we’ll be in Washington for breakfast!
— Why, God bless this lovely bastard of a train! It is the best damned train that ever pulled a car since Grant took Richmond! — Which way does the damn thing go? — Pennsylvania? — Well, that’s all right! Don’t you say a word against Pennsylvania! My father came from Pennsylvania, boys, he was the best damned man that ever lived — He was a stone-cutter and he’s better than any son-of-a-bitch of a plumber you ever saw — He’s got a cancer and six doctors and they can’t kill him! — But to hell with going where we go! — We’re out to see the world, boy! — To hell with Baltimore, New York, Boston! Run her off the God-damn rails! We’re going West! Run her through the woods — cross fields — rivers, through the hills! Hell’s pecker! But I’ll shove her up the grade and through the gap, no double-header needed! — Let’s see the world now! Through Nebraska, boy! Let’s shove her through, now, you can do it! — Let’s run her through Ohio, Kansas, and the unknown plains! Come on, you hogger, let’s see the great plains and the fields of wheat — Stop off in Dakota, Minnesota, and the fertile places — Give us a minute while you breathe to put our foot upon it, to feel it spring back with the deep elastic feeling, 8,000 miles below, unrolled and lavish, depthless, different from the East.
Now Virginia lay dreaming in the moonlight! And on Florida’s bright waters the fair and lovely daughters of the Wilsons and the Potters; the Cabots and the Lowells; the Weisbergs and O’Hares; the Astors and the Goulds; the Ransoms and the Rands; the Westalls and the Pattons and the Webbs; the Reynolds and McRaes; the Spanglers and the Beams; the Gudgers and the Blakes; the Pedersons and Craigs — all the lovely daughters, the Robinsons and Waters, the millionaires’ sweet daughters, the Boston maids, the Beacon Slades, the Back Bay Wades, all of the merchant, lawyer, railroad and well-moneyed grades of Hudson River daughters in the moon’s bright living waters — lay dreaming in the moonlight, beaming in the moonlight, seeming in the moonlight, to be dreaming to be gleaming in the moon.
— Give ’em hell, son!
— Here, give him another drink! — Attaboy! Drink her down!
— Drink her down — drink her down — drink her down — damn your soul — drink her down!
— By God, I’ll drink her down and flood the whole end of Virginia, I’ll drown out Maryland, make a flood in Pennsylvania — I tell you boys I’ll float ’em, I’ll raise ’em up, I’ll bring ’em down stream, now — I mean the Potters and the Waters, the rich men’s lovely daughters, the city’s tender daughters, the Hudson river daughters —
Lay dreaming in the moonlight, beaming in the moonlight, to be seeming to be beaming in the moonlight moonlight moonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight.
And Virginia lay dreaming in the moon.
Then the moon blazed down upon the vast desolation of the American coasts, and on all the glut and hiss of tides, on all the surge and foaming slide of waters on lone beaches. The moon blazed down on 18,000 miles of coast, on the million sucks and scoops and hollows of the shore, and on the great wink of the sea, that ate the earth minutely and eternally. The moon blazed down upon the wilderness, it fell on sleeping woods, it dripped through moving leaves, it swarmed in weaving patterns on the earth, and it filled the cat’s still eye with blazing yellow. The moon slept over mountains and lay like silence in the desert, and it carved the shadows of great rocks like time. The moon was mixed with flowing rivers, and it was buried in the heart of lakes, and it trembled on the water like bright fish. The moon steeped all the earth in its living and unearthly substance, it had a thousand visages, it painted continental space with ghostly light; and its light was proper to the nature of all the things it touched: it came in with the sea, it flowed with the rivers, and it was still and living on clear spaces in the forest where no men watched.
And in woodland darkness great birds fluttered to their sleep — in sleeping woodlands strange and secret birds, the teal, the nightjar, and the flying rail went to their sleep with flutterings dark as hearts of sleeping men. In fronded beds and on the leaves of unfamiliar plants where the tarantula, the adder, and the asp had fed themselves asleep on their own poisons, and on lush jungle depths where green-golden, bitter red and glossy blue proud tufted birds cried out with brainless scream, the moonlight slept.
The moonlight slept above dark herds moving with slow grazings in the night, it covered lonely little villages; but most of all it fell upon the unbroken undulation of the wilderness, and it blazed on windows and moved across the face of sleeping men.
Sleep lay upon the wilderness, it lay across the faces of the nations, it lay like silence on the hearts of sleeping men; and low upon lowlands, and high upon hills, flowed gently sleep, smooth-sliding sleep — sleep — sleep.
— Robert —
— Go on to bed, Gene, go to bed now, go to bed.
— There’s shump’n I mush shay t’you —
— Damn fool! Go to bed!
— Go to bed! I’ll go to bed when I’m God-damn good and ready! I’ll not go to bed when there’s shump’n I mush shay t’you —
— Go on to bed now, Gene. You’ve had enough.
— Creasman, you’re a good fellow maybe but I don’t know you. . . . You keep out of this. . . . Robert. . . . I’m gonna tell y’ shump’n. . . . You made a remark t’night I didn’ like — Prayin’ for me, are they, Robert?
— You damn fool! — You don’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout! Go on to bed! —
— I’ll go to bed, you bastard — I got shump’n to shay t’you! — Prayin.’ for me, are yuh? — Pray for yourself, y’ bloody little Deke!
— Damn fool’s crazy! Go on to bed now —
— I’ll bed yuh, you son-of-a-bitch! What was it that y’ said that day? —
— What day? You damned fool, you don’t know what you’re saying!
— I’ll tell yuh what day! — Coming along Chestnut Street that day after school with you and me and Sunny Jim Curtis and Ed Petrie and Bob Pegram and Carl Hartshorn and Monk Paul — and the rest of those boys —
— You damn fool! Chestnut Street! I don’t know what you’re talking about!
— Yes, you do! — You and me and Bob and Carl and Irwin and Jim Homes and some other boys —‘Member what y’ said, yuh son-of-a-bitch? Old man English was in his yard there burning up some leaves and it was October and we were comin’ along there after school and you could smell the leaves and it was after school and you said, “Here’s Mr. Gant, the tombstone-cutter’s son.”
— You damn fool! I don’t know what you’re talking about! —
— Yes, you do, you cheap Deke son-of-a-bitch — Too good to talk to us on the street when you were sucking around after Bruce Martin or Steve Patton or Jack Marriott — but a lifelong brother — oh! couldn’t see enough of us, could you, when you were alone?
— The damn fool’s crazy!
— Crazy, am I? — Well, we never had any old gummy grannies tied down and hidden in the attic — which