Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (8 page)

"Mountain Blood!  Mountain Blood!" he
yelled.  "He's Greeley Pentland all over again.  Mark
my words," he continued, after striding feverishly about the
house, muttering to himself and bursting finally into the kitchen,
"mark my words, he'll wind up in the penitentiary."

And, her nose reddened by the spitting grease, she
would purse her lips, saying little, save, when goaded, to make some
return calculated to infuriate and antagonize him.

"Well, maybe if he hadn't been sent to every
dive in town to pull his daddy out, he would turn out better."

"You lie, Woman!  By God, you lie!" he
thundered magnificently but illogically.
 
 

Gant drank less: save for a terrifying spree every
six or eight weeks, which bound them all in fear for two or three
days, Eliza had little to complain of on this score.  But her
enormous patience was wearing very thin because of the daily cycle of
abuse.  They slept now in separate rooms upstairs: he rose at
six or six-thirty, dressed and went down to build the fires.  As
he kindled a blaze in the range, and a roaring fire in the
sitting-room, he muttered constantly to himself, with an occasional
oratorical rise and fall of his voice.  In this way he composed
and polished the flood of his invective: when the demands of fluency
and emphasis had been satisfied he would appear suddenly before her
in the kitchen, and deliver himself without preliminary, as the
grocer's negro entered with pork chops or a thick steak:

"Woman, would you have had a roof to shelter you
to-day if it  hadn't been for me?  Could you have depended
on your worthless old father, Tom Pentland, to give you one? 
Would Brother Will, or Brother Jim give you one?  Did you ever
hear of them giving any one anything?  Did you ever hear of them
caring for anything but their own miserable hides?  DID you? 
Would any of them give a starving beggar a crust of bread?  By
God, no!  Not even if he ran a bakery shop!  Ah me! 
'Twas a bitter day for me when I first came into this accursed
country: little did I know what it would lead to. Mountain Grills! 
Mountain Grills!" and the tide would reach its height.

At times, when she tried to reply to his attack, she
would burst easily into tears.  This pleased him: he liked to
see her cry.  But usually she made an occasional nagging retort:
deep down, between their blind antagonistic souls, an ugly and
desperate war was being waged.  Yet, had he known to what
lengths these daily assaults might drive her, he would have been
astounded: they were part of the deep and feverish discontent of his
spirit, the rooted instinct to have an object for his abuse.

Moreover, his own feeling for order was so great that
he had a passionate aversion for what was slovenly, disorderly,
diffuse.  He was goaded to actual fury at times when he saw how
carefully she saved bits of old string, empty cans and bottles,
paper, trash of every description: the mania for acquisition, as yet
an undeveloped madness in Eliza, enraged him.

"In God's name!" he would cry with genuine
anger.  "In God's name! Why don't you get rid of some of
this junk?"  And he would move destructively toward it.

"No you don't, Mr. Gant!" she would answer
sharply.  "You never know when those things will come in
handy."

It was, perhaps, a reversal of custom that the
deep-hungering spirit of quest belonged to the one with the greatest
love of order, the most pious regard for ritual, who wove into a
pattern even his daily tirades of abuse, and that the sprawling blot
of chaos, animated by one all-mastering desire for possession,
belonged to the practical, the daily person.

Gant had the passion of the true wanderer, of him who
wanders from a fixed point.  He needed the order and the
dependence of a home--he was intensely a family man: their clustered
warmth and strength about him was life.  After his punctual
morning tirade at Eliza, he went about the rousing of the slumbering
children.  Comically, he could not endure feeling, in the
morning, that he was the only one awake and about.

His waking cry, delivered by formula, with huge comic
gruffness from the foot of the stairs, took this form:

"Steve!  Ben!  Grover!  Luke! 
You damned scoundrels: get up!  In God's name, what will become
of you!  You'll never amount to anything as long as you live."

He would continue to roar at them from below as if
they were wakefully attentive above.

"When I was your age, I had milked four cows,
done all the chores, and walked eight miles through the snow by this
time."

Indeed, when he described his early schooling, he
furnished a landscape that was constantly three feet deep in snow,
and frozen hard.  He seemed never to have attended school save
under polar conditions.
 
And
fifteen minutes later, he would roar again:  "You'll never
amount to anything, you good-for-nothing bums!  If one side of
the wall caved in, you'd roll over to the other."

Presently now there would be the rapid thud of feet
upstairs, and one by one they would descend, rushing naked into the
sitting-room with their clothing bundled in their arms.  Before
his roaring fire they would dress.

By breakfast, save for sporadic laments, Gant was in
something approaching good humor.  They fed hugely: he stoked
their plates for them with great slabs of fried steak, grits fried in
egg, hot biscuits, jam, fried apples.  He departed for his shop
about the time the boys, their throats still convulsively swallowing
hot food and coffee, rushed from the house at the warning signal of
the mellow-tolling final nine-o'clock school bell.

He returned for lunch--dinner, as they called
it--briefly garrulous with the morning's news; in the evening, as the
family gathered in again, he returned, built his great fire, and
launched his supreme invective, a ceremony which required a half hour
in composition, and another three-quarters, with repetition and
additions, in delivery.  They dined then quite happily.

So passed the winter.  Eugene was three; they
bought him alphabet books, and animal pictures, with rhymed fables
below.  Gant read them to him indefatigably: in six weeks he
knew them all by memory.

Through the late winter and spring he performed
numberless times for the neighbors: holding the book in his hands he
pretended to read what he knew by heart.  Gant was delighted: he
abetted the deception.  Every one thought it extraordinary that
a child should read so young.

In the Spring Gant began to drink again; his thirst
withered, however, in two or three weeks, and shamefacedly he took up
the routine of his life.  But Eliza was preparing for a change.

It was 1904; there was in preparation a great world's
exposition at Saint Louis: it was to be the visual history of
civilization, bigger, better, and greater than anything of its kind
ever known before.  Many of the Altamont people intended to go:
Eliza was fascinated at the prospect of combining travel with profit.

"Do you know what?" she began thoughtfully
one night, as she laid down the paper, "I've a good notion to
pack up and go."

"Go?  Go where?"

"To Saint Louis," she answered.  "Why,
say--if things work out all right, we might simply pull out and
settle down there."  She knew that the suggestion of a
total disruption of the established life, a voyage to new lands, a
new quest of fortune fascinated him.  It had been talked of
years before when he had broken his partnership with Will Pentland.

"What do you intend to do out there?  How
are the children going to get along?"

"Why, sir," she began smugly, pursing her
lips thoughtfully, and smiling cunningly, "I'll simply get me a
good big house and drum up a trade among the Altamont people who are
going."

"Merciful God, Mrs. Gant!" he howled
tragically, "you surely wouldn't do a thing like that.  I
beg you not to."

"Why, pshaw, Mr. Gant, don't be such a fool. 
There's nothing wrong in keeping boarders.  Some of the most
respectable people in this town do it."  She knew what a
tender thing his pride was: he could not bear to be thought incapable
of the support of his family?one of his most frequent boasts was that
he was "a good provider." Further, the residence of any one
under his roof not of his blood and bone sowed the air about with
menace, breached his castle walls.  Finally, he had a particular
revulsion against lodgers: to earn one's living by accepting the
contempt, the scorn, and the money of what he called "cheap
boarders" was an almost unendurableignominy.

She knew this but she could not understand his
feeling.  Not merely to possess property, but to draw income
from it was part of the religion of her family, and she surpassed
them all by her willingness to rent out a part of her home.  She
alone, in fact, of all the Pentlands was willing to relinquish the
little moated castle of home; the particular secrecy and privacy of
their walls she alone did not seem to value greatly.  And she
was the only one of them that wore a skirt.

Eugene had been fed from her breast until he was more
than three years old: during the winter he was weaned. 
Something in her stopped; something began.

She had her way finally.  Sometimes she would
talk to Gant thoughtfully and persuasively about the World's Fair
venture. Sometimes, during his evening tirades, she would snap back
at him using the project as a threat.  Just what was to be
achieved she did not know.  But she felt it was a beginning for
her.  And she had her way finally.

Gant succumbed to the lure of new lands.  He was
to remain at home: if all went well he would come out later. 
The prospect, too, of release for a time excited him.  Something
of the old thrill of youth touched him.  He was left behind, but
the world lurked full of unseen shadows for a lonely man.  Daisy
was in her last year at school: she stayed with him.  But it
cost him more than a pang or two to see Helen go.  She was
almost fourteen.

In early April, Eliza departed, bearing her excited
brood about her, and carrying Eugene in her arms.  He was
bewildered at this rapid commotion, but he was electric with
curiosity and activity.

The Tarkintons and Duncans streamed in: there were
tears and kisses.  Mrs. Tarkinton regarded her with some awe. 
The whole neighborhood was a bit bewildered at this latest turn.

"Well, well--you never can tell," said
Eliza, smiling tearfully and enjoying the sensation she had
provided.  "If things go well we may settle down out
there."

"You'll come back," said Mrs. Tarkinton
with cheerful loyalty. "There's no place like Altamont."

They went to the station in the street-car: Ben and
Grover gleefully sat together, guarding a big luncheon hamper. 
Helen clutched nervously a bundle of packages.  Eliza glanced
sharply at her long straight legs and thought of the half-fare.

"Say," she began, laughing indefinitely
behind her hand, and nudging Gant, "she'll have to scrooch up,
won't she?  They'll think you're mighty big to be under twelve,"
she went on, addressing the girl directly.

Helen stirred nervously.

"We shouldn't have done that," Gant
muttered.

"Pshaw!" said Eliza.  "No one
will ever notice her."

He saw them into the train, disposed comfortably by
the solicitous Pullman porter.

"Keep your eye on them, George," he said,
and gave the man a coin. Eliza eyed it jealously.

He kissed them all roughly with his mustache, but he
patted his little girl's bony shoulders with his great hand, and
hugged her to him.  Something stabbed sharply in Eliza.

They had an awkward moment.  The strangeness,
the absurdity of the whole project, and the monstrous fumbling of all
life, held them speechless.

"Well," he began, "I reckon you know
what you're doing."

"Well, I tell you," she said, pursing her
lips, and looking out the window, "you don't know what may come
out of this."

He was vaguely appeased.  The train jerked, and
moved off slowly. He kissed her clumsily.

"Let me know as soon as you get there," he
said, and he strode swiftly down the aisle.

"Good-by, good-by," cried Eliza, waving
Eugene's small hand at the long figure on the platform. 
"Children," she said, "wave good-by to your papa." 
They all crowded to the window.  Eliza wept.
 
 

Eugene watched the sun wane and redden on a rocky
river, and on the painted rocks of Tennessee gorges: the enchanted
river wound into his child's mind forever.  Years later, it was
to be remembered in dreams tenanted with elvish and mysterious
beauty.  Stilled in great wonder, he went to sleep to the
rhythmical pounding of the heavy wheels.

They lived in a white house on the corner. 
There was a small plot of lawn in front, and a narrow strip on the
side next to the pavement.  He realized vaguely that it was far
from the great central web and roar of the city--he thought he heard
some one say four or five miles.  Where was the river?

Two little boys, twins, with straight very blond
heads, and thin, mean faces, raced up and down the sidewalk before
the house incessantly on tricycles.  They wore white
sailor-suits, with blue collars, and he hated them very much. 
He felt vaguely that their father was a bad man who had fallen down
an elevator shaft, breaking his legs.