Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
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he paced restlessly up and down the hall or prowled through the house a-search for some entrance he had never found, a bright and stricken thing kept twisting about like a trapped bird. This bright thing, the core of him, his Stranger, kept twisting its head about, unable to look at horror, until at length it gazed steadfastly, as if under a dreadful hypnosis, into the eyes of death and darkness. And his soul plunged downward, drowning in that deep pit: he felt that he could never again escape from this smothering flood of pain and ugliness, from the eclipsing horror and pity of it all. And as he walked, he twisted his own neck about, and beat the air with his arm like a wing, as if he had received a blow in his kidneys. He felt that he might be clean and free if he could only escape into a single burning passion — hard, and hot, and glittering — of love, hatred, terror, or disgust. But he was caught, he was strangling, in the web of futility — there was no moment of hate that was not touched by a dozen shafts of pity: impotently, he wanted to seize them, cuff them, shake them, as one might a trying brat, and at the same time to caress them, love them, comfort them.
As he thought of the dying boy upstairs, the messy ugliness of it — as they stood whimpering by while he strangled — choked him with fury and horror. The old fantasy of his childhood came back to him: he remembered his hatred of the semi-private bathroom, his messy discomfort while he sat at stool and stared at the tub filled with dirty wash, sloppily puffed and ballooned by cold gray soapy water. He thought of this as Ben lay dying.
Their hopes revived strongly in the forenoon when word came to them that the patient’s temperature was lower, his pulse stronger, the congestion of the lungs slightly relieved. But at one o’clock, after a fit of coughing, he grew delirious, his temperature mounted, he had increasing difficulty in getting his breath. Eugene and Luke raced to Wood’s pharmacy in Hugh Barton’s car, for an oxygen tank. When they returned, Ben had almost choked to death. Quickly they carried the tank into the room, and placed it near his head. Bessie Gant seized the cone, and started to put it over Ben’s mouth, commanding him to breathe it in. He fought it away tigerishly: curtly the nurse commanded Eugene to seize his hands.
Eugene gripped Ben’s hot wrists: his heart turned rotten. Ben rose wildly from his pillows, wrenching like a child to get his hands free, gasping horribly, his eyes wild with terror:
“No! No! ‘Gene! ‘Gene! No! No!”
Eugene caved in, releasing him and turning way, white-faced, from the accusing fear of the bright dying eyes. Others held him. He was given temporary relief. Then he became delirious again.
By four o’clock it was apparent that death was near. Ben had brief periods of consciousness, unconsciousness, and delirium — but most of the time he was delirious. His breathing was easier, he hummed snatches of popular songs, some old and forgotten, called up now from the lost and secret adyts of his childhood; but always he returned, in his quiet humming voice, to a popular song of war-time — cheap, sentimental, but now tragically moving: “Just a Baby’s Prayer at Twilight,”
“ . . . when lights are low.
Poor baby’s years”
Helen entered the darkening room.
“Are filled with tears.”
The fear had gone out of his eyes: above his gasping he looked gravely at her, scowling, with the old puzzled child’s stare. Then, in a moment of fluttering consciousness, he recognized her. He grinned beautifully, with the thin swift flicker of his mouth.
“Hello, Helen! It’s Helen!” he cried eagerly.
She came from the room with a writhen and contorted face, holding the sobs that shook her until she was half-way down the stairs.
As darkness came upon the gray wet day, the family gathered in the parlor, in the last terrible congress before death, silent, waiting. Gant rocked petulantly, spitting into the fire, making a weak whining moan from time to time. One by one, at intervals, they left the room, mounting the stairs softly, and listening outside the door of the sick-room. And they heard Ben, as, with incessant humming repetition, like a child, he sang his song,
“There’s a mother there at twilight
Who’s glad to know —”
Eliza sat stolidly, hands folded, before the parlor fire. Her dead white face had a curious carven look; the inflexible solidity of madness.
“Well,” she said at length, slowly, “you never know. Perhaps this is the crisis. Perhaps —” her face hardened into granite again. She said no more.
Coker came in and went at once, without speaking, to the sick-room. Shortly before nine o’clock Bessie Gant came down.
“All right,” she said quietly. “You had all better come up now. This is the end.”
Eliza got up and marched out of the room with a stolid face. Helen followed her: she was panting with hysteria, and had begun to wring her big hands.
“Now, get hold of yourself, Helen,” said Bessie Gant warningly. “This is no time to let yourself go.”
Eliza went steadily upstairs, making no noise. But, as she neared the room, she paused, as if listening for sounds within. Faintly, in the silence, they heard Ben’s song. And suddenly, casting away all pretense, Eliza staggered, and fell against the wall, turning her face into her hand, with a terrible wrenched cry:
“O God! If I had known! If I had known!”
Then, weeping with bitter unrestraint, with the contorted and ugly grimace of sorrow, mother and daughter embraced each other. In a moment they composed themselves, and quietly entered the room.
Eugene and Luke pulled Gant to his feet and supported him up the stairs. He sprawled upon them, moaning in long quivering exhalations.
“Mer-ci-ful God! That I should have to bear this in my old age. That I should —”
“Papa! For God’s sake!” Eugene cried sharply. “Pull yourself together! It’s Ben who’s dying — not us! Let’s try to behave decently to him for once.”
This served to quiet Gant for a moment. But as he entered the room, and saw Ben lying in the semi-conscious coma that precedes death, the fear of his own death overcame him, and he began to moan again. They seated him in a chair, at the foot of the bed, and he rocked back and forth, weeping:
“O Jesus! I can’t bear it! Why must you put this upon me? I’m old and sick, and I don’t know where the money’s to come from. How are we ever going to face this fearful and croo-el winter? It’ll cost a thousand dollars before we’re through burying him, and I don’t know where the money’s to come from.” He wept affectedly with sniffling sobs.
“Hush! hush!” cried Helen, rushing at him. In her furious anger, she seized him and shook him. “You damned old man you, I could kill you! How dare you talk like that when your son’s dying? I’ve wasted six years of my life nursing you, and you’ll be the last one to go!” In her blazing anger, she turned accusingly on Eliza:
“You’ve done this to him. You’re the one that’s responsible. If you hadn’t pinched every penny he’d never have been like this. Yes, and Ben would be here, too!” She panted for breath for a moment. Eliza made no answer. She did not hear her.
“After this, I’m through! I’ve been looking for you to die — and Ben’s the one who has to go.” Her voice rose to a scream of exasperation. She shook Gant again. “Never again! Do you hear that, you selfish old man? You’ve had everything — Ben’s had nothing. And now he’s the one to go. I hate you!”
“Helen! Helen!” said Bessie Gant quietly. “Remember where you are.”
“Yes, that means a lot to us,” Eugene muttered bitterly.
Then, over the ugly clamor of their dissension, over the rasp and snarl of their nerves, they heard the low mutter of Ben’s expiring breath. The light had been reshaded: he lay, like his own shadow, in all his fierce gray lonely beauty. And as they looked and saw his bright eyes already blurred with death, and saw the