OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  "Hah? . . . What say?" the mother now cried sharply, darting her glances from one to another with the quick, startled, curiously puzzled intentness of an animal or a bird. "What say?" she cried sharply again, as no one answered. "I thought--"

  But fortunately, at this moment, this strange and disturbing flash in which had been revealed the blind and tangled purposes, the powerful and obscure impulses, the tormented nerves, the whole tragic perplexity of soul which was of the very fabric of their lives, was interrupted by a commotion in one of the groups upon the platform, and by a great guffaw of laughter which instantly roused these three people from this painful and perplexing scene, and directed their startled attention to the place from which the laughter came.

  And now again they heard the great guffaw--a solid "Haw! Haw! Haw!" which was full of such an infectious exuberance of animal good-nature that other people on the platform began to smile instinctively, and to look affectionately towards the owner of the laugh.

  Already, at the sound of the laugh, the young woman had forgotten the weary and dejected resignation of the moment before, and with an absent and yet eager look of curiosity in her eyes, she was staring towards the group from which the laugh had come, and herself now laughing absently, she was stroking her big chin in a gesture of meditative curiosity, saying:

  "Hah! Hah! Hah! . . . That's George Pentland. . . . You can tell him anywhere by his laugh."

  "Why, yes," the mother was saying briskly, with satisfaction. "That's George all right. I'd know him in the dark the minute that I heard that laugh.--And say, what about it? He's always had it--why, ever since he was a kid-boy--and was going around with Steve. . . . Oh, he'd come right out with it anywhere, you know, in Sunday school, church, or while the preacher was sayin' prayers before collection--that big, loud laugh, you know, that you could hear, from here to yonder, as the sayin' goes. . . . Now I don't know where it comes from--none of the others ever had it in our family; now we all liked to laugh well enough, but I never heard no such laugh as that from any of 'em--there's one thing sure, Will Pentland never laughed like that in his life--Oh, Pett, you know! Pett!"--a scornful and somewhat malicious look appeared on the woman's face as she referred to her brother's wife in that whining and affected tone with which women imitate the speech of other women whom they do not like--"Pett got so mad at him one time when he laughed right out in church that she was goin' to take the child right home an' whip him.--Told me, says to me, you know--'Oh, I could wring his neck! He'll disgrace us all,' she says, 'unless I cure him of it,' says, 'He burst right out in that great roar of his while Doctor Baines was sayin' his prayers this morning until you couldn't hear a word the preacher said.' Said, 'I was so mortified to think he could do a thing like that that I'd a-beat the blood right out of him if I'd had my buggy whip,' says, 'I don't know where it comes from'--oh, sneerin'-like, you know," the woman said, imitating the other woman's voice with a sneering and viperous dislike--"'I don't know where it comes from unless it's some of that common Pentland blood comin' out in him'--'Now you listen to me,' I says; oh, I looked her in the eye, you know"--here the woman looked at her daughter with the straight steady stare of her worn brown eyes, illustrating her speech with the loose and powerful gesture of the half-clasped finger-pointing hand--"'you listen to me. I don't know where that child gets his laugh,' I says, 'but you can bet your bottom dollar that he never got it from his father--or any other Pentland that I ever heard of--for none of them ever laughed that way--Will, or Jim, or Sam, or George, or Ed, or Father, or even Uncle Bacchus,' I said--'no, nor old Bill Pentland either, who was that child's great-grandfather--for I've seen an' heard 'em all,' I says. 'And as for this common Pentland blood you speak of, Pett'--oh, I guess I talked to her pretty straight, you know," she said with a little bitter smile, and the short, powerful, and convulsive tremor of her strong pursed lips--"'as for that common Pentland blood you speak of, Pett,' I says, 'I never heard of that either--for we stood high in the community,' I says, 'and we all felt that Will was lowerin' himself when he married a Creasman!'"

  "Oh, you didn't say that, Mama, surely not," the young woman said with a hoarse, protesting, and yet abstracted laugh, continuing to survey the people on the platform with a bemused and meditative curiosity, and stroking her big chin thoughtfully as she looked at them, pausing from time to time to grin in a comical and rather formal manner, bow graciously and murmur:

  "How-do-you-do? ah-hah! How-do-you-do, Mrs. Willis?"

  "Haw! Haw! Haw!" Again the great laugh of empty animal good nature burst out across the station platform, and this time George Pentland turned from the group of which he was a member and looked vacantly around him, his teeth bared with savage joy, as, with two brown fingers of his strong left hand, he dug vigorously into the muscular surface of his hard thigh. It was an animal reflex, instinctive and unconscious, habitual to him in moments of strong mirth.

  He was a powerful and handsome young man in his early thirties, with coal-black hair, a strong thick neck, powerful shoulders, and the bull vitality of the athlete. He had a red, sensual, curiously animal and passionate face, and when he laughed his great guffaw, his red lips were bared over two rows of teeth that were white and regular and solid as ivory.

  --But now, the paroxysm of that savage and mindless laughter having left him, George Pentland had suddenly espied the mother and her children, waved to them in genial greeting, and excusing himself from his companions--a group of young men and women who wore the sporting look and costume of "the country club crowd"--he was walking towards his kinsmen at an indolent swinging stride, pausing to acknowledge heartily the greetings of people on every side, with whom he was obviously a great favourite.

  As he approached, he bared his strong white teeth again in greeting, and in a drawling, rich-fibred voice, which had unmistakably the Pentland quality of sensual fullness, humour, and assurance, and a subtle but gloating note of pleased self-satisfaction, he said:

  "Hello, Aunt Eliza, how are you? Hello, Helen--how are you, Hugh?" he said in his high, somewhat accusing, but very strong and masculine voice, putting his big hand in an easy affectionate way on Barton's arm. "Where the hell you been keepin' yourself, anyway?" he said accusingly. "Why don't some of you folks come over to see us sometime? Elk was askin' about you all the other day--wanted to know why Helen didn't come round more often."

  "Well, George, I tell you how it is," the young woman said with an air of great sincerity and earnestness. "Hugh and I have intended to come over a hundred times, but life has been just one damned thing after another all summer long. If I could only have a moment's peace--if I could only get away by myself for a moment--if they would only leave me alone for an hour at a time, I think I could get myself together again--do you know what I mean, George?" she said hoarsely and eagerly, trying to enlist him in her sympathetic confidence--"If they'd only do something for themselves once in a while--but they all come to me when anything goes wrong--they never let me have a moment's peace--until at times I think I'm going crazy--I get queer--funny, you know," she said vaguely and incoherently. "I don't know whether something happened Tuesday or last week or if I just imagined it." And for a moment her big gaunt face had the dull strained look of hysteria.

  "The strain on her has been very great this summer," said Barton in a deep and grave tone. "It's--it's," he paused carefully, deeply, searching for a word, and looked down as he flicked an ash from his long cigar, "it's--been too much for her. Everything's on her shoulders," he concluded in his deep grave voice.

  "My God, George, what is it?" she said quietly and simply, in the tone of one begging for enlightenment. "Is it going to be this way all our lives? Is there never going to be any peace or happiness for us? Does it always have to be this way? Now I want to ask you--is there nothing in the world but trouble?"

  "Trouble!" he said derisively. "Why, I've had more trouble than any one of you ever heard of. . . . I've had enough to kill a dozen people . . . but when I saw it wasn't goin' to kill me, I q
uit worryin'. . . . So you do the same thing," he advised heartily. "Hell, don't worry, Helen! . . . It never got you anywhere. . . . You'll be all right," he said. "You got nothin' to worry over. You don't know what trouble is."

  "Oh, I'd be all right, George--I think I could stand anything--all the rest of it--if it wasn't for Papa. . . . I'm almost crazy from worrying about him this summer. There were three times there when I knew he was gone. . . . And I honestly believe I pulled him back each time by main strength and determination--do you know what I mean?" she said hoarsely and eagerly--"I was just determined not to let him go. If his heart had stopped beating I believe I could have done something to make it start again--I'd have stood over him and blown my breath into him--got my blood into him--shook him," she said with a powerful, nervous movement of her big hands--"anything just to keep him alive."

  "She's--she's--saved his life--time after time," said Barton slowly, flicking his cigar ash carefully away, and looking down deeply, searching for a word.

  "He'd--he'd--have been a dead man long ago--if it hadn't been for her."

  "Yeah--I know she has," George Pentland drawled agreeably. "I know you've sure stuck by Uncle Will--I guess he knows it, too."

  "It's not that I mind it, George--you know what I mean?" she said eagerly. "Good heavens! I believe I could give away a dozen lives if I thought it was going to save his life! . . . But it's the strain of it. . . . Month after month . . . year after year . . . lying awake at night wondering if he's all right over there in that back room in Mama's house--wondering if he's keeping warm in that old cold house--"

  "Why, no, child," the older woman said hastily. "I kept a good fire burnin' in that room all last winter--that was the warmest room in the whole place--there wasn't a warmer--"

  But immediately she was engulfed, swept aside, obliterated in the flood-tide of the other's speech.

  "--Wondering if he's sick or needs me--if he's begun to bleed again--oh! George, it makes me sick to think about it--that poor old man left there all alone, rotting away with that awful cancer, with that horrible smell about him all the time--everything he wears gets simply stiff with that rotten corrupt matter--Do you know what it is to wait, wait, wait, year after year, and year after year, never knowing when he's going to die, to have him hang on by a thread until it seems you've lived forever--that there'll never be an end--that you'll never have a chance to live your own life--to have a moment's peace or rest or happiness yourself? My God, does it always have to be this way? . . . Can I never have a moment's happiness? . . . Must they always come to me? Does everything have to be put on my shoulders? . . . Will you tell me that?" Her voice had risen to a note of frenzied despair. She was glaring at her cousin with a look of desperate and frantic entreaty, her whole gaunt figure tense and strained with the stress of her hysteria.

  "That's--that's the trouble now," said Barton, looking down and searching for the word. "She's . . . She's . . . made the goat for every one. . . . She . . . she has to do it all. . . . That's . . . that's the thing that's got her down."

  "Not that I mind--if it will do any good. . . . Good heaven's, Papa's life means more to me than anything on earth. . . . I'd keep him alive at any cost as long as there was a breath left in him. . . . But it's the strain of it, the strain of it--to wait, to wait year after year, to feel it hanging over you all the time, never to know when he will die--always the strain, the strain--do you see what I mean, George?" she said hoarsely, eagerly, and pleadingly. "You see, don't you?"

  "I sure do, Helen," he said sympathetically, digging at his thigh, and with a swift, cat-like grimace of his features. "I know it's been mighty tough on you. . . . How is Uncle Will now?" he said. "Is he any better?"

  "Why, yes," the mother was saying, "he seemed to improve--" but she was cut off immediately.

  "Oh, yes," the daughter said in a tone of weary dejection. "He pulled out of this last spell and got well enough to make the trip to Baltimore--we sent him back a week ago to take another course of treatments. . . . But it does no real good, George. . . . They can't cure him. . . . We know that now. . . . They've told us that. . . . It only prolongs the agony. . . . They help him for a little while and then it all begins again. . . . Poor old man!" she said, and her eyes were wet. "I'd give everything I have--my own blood, my own life--if it would do him any good--but, George, he's gone!" she said desperately. "Can't you understand that? . . . They can't save him! . . . Nothing can save him! . . . Papa's a dead man now!"

  George looked gravely sympathetic for a moment, winced swiftly, dug hard fingers in his thigh, and then said:

  "Who went to Baltimore with him?"

  "Why, Luke's up there," the mother said. "We had a letter from him yesterday--said Mr. Gant looks much better already--eats well, you know, has a good appetite--and Luke says he's in good spirits. Now--"

  "Oh, Mama, for heaven's sake!" the daughter cried. "What's the use of talking that way? . . . He's not getting any better. . . . Papa's a sick man--dying--good God! Can no one ever get that into their heads!" she burst out furiously. "Am I the only one that realizes how sick he is?"

  "No, now I was only sayin'," the mother began hastily--"Well, as I say, then," she went on, "Luke's up there with him--and Gene's on his way there now--he's goin' to stop off there tomorrow on his way up north to school."

  "Gene!" cried George Pentland in a high, hearty, bantering tone, turning to address the boy directly for the first time. "What's all this I hear about you, son?" He clasped his muscular hand around the boy's arm in a friendly but powerful grip. "Ain't one college enough for you, boy?" he drawled, becoming deliberately ungrammatical and speaking good-naturedly but with a trace of the mockery which the wastrel and ne'er-do-well sometimes feels towards people who have had the energy and application required for steady or concentrated effort. "Are you one of those fellers who needs two or three colleges to hold him down?"

  The boy flushed, grinned uncertainly, and said nothing.

  "Why, son," drawled George in his hearty, friendly and yet bantering tone, in which a note of malice was evident, "you'll be gettin' so educated an' high-brow here before long that you won't be able to talk to the rest of us at all. . . . You'll be floatin' around there so far up in the clouds that you won't even see a roughneck like me, much less talk to him"--As he went on with this kind of sarcasm, his speech had become almost deliberately illiterate, as if trying to emphasize the superior virtue of the rough, hearty, home-grown fellow in comparison with the bookish scholar.

  "--Where's he goin' to this time, Aunt Eliza?" he said, turning to her questioningly, but still holding the boy's arm in his strong grip "Where's he headin' for now?"

  "Why," she said, stroking her pursed serious mouth with a slightly puzzled movement, "he says he's goin' to Harvard. I reckon," she said, in the same puzzled tone, "it's all right--I guess he knows what he's about. Says he's made up his mind to go--I told him," she said, and shook her head again, "that I'd send him for a year if he wanted to try it--an' then he'll have to get out an' shift for himself. We'll see," she said. "I reckon it's all right."

  "Harvard, eh?" said George Pentland. "Boy, you are flyin' high! . . . What you goin' to do up there?"

  The boy, furiously red of face, squirmed, and finally stammered:

  "Why . . . I . . . guess . . . I guess I'll do some studying!"

  "You guess you will!" roared George. "You'd damn well better do some studying--I bet your mother'll take it out of your hide if she finds you loafin' on her money."

  "Why, yes," the mother said, nodding seriously, "I told him it was up to him to make the most of this--"

  "Harvard, eh!" George Pentland said again, slowly looking his cousin over from head to foot. "Son, you're flyin' high, you are! . . . Now don't fly so high you never get back to earth again! . . . You know the rest of us who didn't go to Harvard still have to walk around upon the ground down here," he said. "So don't fly too high or we may not even be able to see you!"

  "George! George!" said the young wo
man in a low tone, holding one hand to her mouth, and bending over to whisper loudly as she looked at her young brother. "Do you think anyone could fly very high with a pair of feet like that?"

  George Pentland looked at the boy's big feet for a moment, shaking his head slowly in much wonderment.

  "Hell, no!" he said at length. "He'd never get off the ground! . . . But if you cut 'em off," he said, "he'd go right up like a balloon, wouldn't he? Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw!" The great guffaw burst from him, and grinning with his solid teeth, he dug blindly at his thigh.

  "Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi," the sister jeered, seeing the boy's flushed and angry face and prodding him derisively in the ribs--"This is our Harvard boy! k, k, k, k!"

  "Don't let 'em kid you, son," said George now in an amiable and friendly manner. "Good luck to you! Give 'em hell when you get up there! . . . You're the only one of us who ever had guts enough to go through college, and we're proud of you! . . . Tell Uncle Bascom and Aunt Louise and all the rest of 'em hello for me when you get to Boston. . . . And remember me to your father and Luke when you get to Baltimore. . . . Good-bye, Gene--I've got to leave you now. Good luck, son," and with a friendly grip of his powerful hand he turned to go. "You folks come over sometime--all of you," he said in parting. "We'd like to see you." And he went away.

  At this moment, all up and down the platform, people had turned to listen to the deep excited voice of a young man who was saying in a staccato tone of astounded discovery:

  "You don't mean it! . . . You swear she did! . . . And you were there and saw it with your own eyes! . . . Well, if that don't beat all I ever heard of! . . . I'll be damned!" after which ejaculation, with an astounded falsetto laugh, he looked about him in an abstracted and unseeing manner, thrust one hand quickly and nervously into his trousers pocket in such a way that his fine brown coat came back, and the large diamond-shaped pin of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was revealed, and at the same time passing one thin nervous hand repeatedly over the lank brown hair that covered his small and well-shaped head, and still muttering in tones of stupefied disbelief--"Lord! Lord! . . . What do you know about that?" suddenly espied the woman and her two children at the other end of the platform, and without a moment's pause, turned on his heel, and walked towards them, at the same time muttering to his astonished friends: