OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ was extraordinary that this absurd story, whether true or not, should have had such a violent effect on the emotions of the boy. Yet now that he had been told of some unknown woman’s concern for the salvation of his soul, and that certain people of the praying sort already thought that he was “lost,” the words were fastened in his flesh like rankling and envenomed barbs. And instantly, the moment that he heard this story and had cursed it, he thought that it was true. Now, his mind could no longer remember the time just a moment before when Robert’s words had seemed only an idle and malicious fabrication, probably designed to goad him, or, even if true, of no great importance.

      But now, as if the idle gossip of the other youth had really pronounced some fatal and inexorable judgment against his whole life, the boy’s spirit was set against “them” blindly, as against a nameless and hostile antagonist. Plunged suddenly into a dark weather of fatality and grim resolution, something in him was saying grimly and desperately:

      “All right, then. If that’s the way they feel about me, I’ll show them.” And seeing the lonely earth outside that went stroking past the windows of the train, he suddenly felt the dark and brooding joy of desperation and escape, and thought again: “Thank God, I’ve got away at last. Now there’s a new land, a new life, new people like myself who will see and know me as I am and value me — and, by God, I’ll show them! I’ll show THEM, all right.”

      And at just this moment of his gloomy thoughts, he muttered sombrely, aloud, with sullen face:

      “All right! To hell with them! I’ll show them!”

      — And was instantly aware that Robert was looking at him, laughing his little, malicious, hoarse, falsetto laugh, and that the other youth, who was a fair-haired, red-cheeked and pleasant-featured boy named Creasman, obviously somewhat inflamed by drink and by his social triumphs of the evening, was now, with an eager excessiveness of good-fellowship, slapping him on the back and saying boisterously:

      “Don’t let him kid you, Gene! To hell with them! What do you care what they say, anyway?”

      With these words, he produced from his pocket a flask of the raw, colourless, savagely instant corn whisky, of which both of them apparently had been partaking pretty freely, and tendering it to the boy, said:

      “Here, take a drink!”

      The boy took the flask, pulled out the cork, and putting the bottle to his lips, instantly gulped down two or three powerful swallows of the fiery stuff. For a moment, he stood there blind and choking, instantly robbed of breath, his throat muscles swelling, working, swallowing convulsively in an aching struggle to keep down the revolting and nauseous tasting stuff, and on no account to show the effort it was costing him.

      “Is that the kick of the mule, or not?” said the Creasman boy, grinning and taking back his flask. “How is it?”

      “Good!” the boy said hoarsely, gasping. “Fine! Best I ever tasted!” And he blinked his eyes rapidly to keep the tears from coming.

      “Well, there’s lots more where that came from, boy,” said Creasman. “I’ve got two pint jars of it in my berth. Let me know when you want some more.” And putting the bottle to his lips with a smile, he tilted his head, and drank in long easy swallows which showed he was no novice to the act.

      “Damn!” cried Robert, staring at him, in his familiar tone of astounded disbelief. “Do you mean to tell me you can stand there drinking that stuff straight! Phew!” he said, shuddering, and making a face. “That old pukey stuff! Why, it’d rot the guts of a brass monkey! . . . I don’t see how you people do it!” he cried protestingly, as he took the bottle. In three gulps he had drained it to the last drop, and even as he was looking around for a place to throw the empty flask, he shuddered convulsively again, made a contracted grimace of disgust, and said to the others accusingly, with his small falsetto laugh of astounded protest:

      “Why, you’ll kill yourself drinking that stuff raw! Don’t you know that? You must be crazy! . . . Wait a minute,” he muttered suddenly, comically, dropping the bottle deftly into his pocket, as the swarthy, pompous little man named Wade entered, attired in blue pyjamas and a dressing-gown, and holding a tooth-brush and a tube of tooth-paste in his hand:

      “Good evening, sir! . . . Ah-hah! . . . How d’ye do?” said Robert, bowing slightly and stiffly, and speaking in his grave, staccato, curiously engaging tone.

      “Still up, are you, boys?” the pompous little man remarked, with his usual telling aptness.

      “Ah-hah-hah!” said Robert appreciatively. “Yes, sir! . . . Just fixin’ to go! . . . Come on,” he muttered to the others, jerking his head towards the little man warningly. “Not here! . . . Well, good night, sir! . . . Goin’ now.”

      “Good night, boys,” said the little man, who now had his back turned to them, and was standing at the silvery basin with his tooth-brush held in readiness. “See you in the morning.”

      “Ah-hah-hah!” said Robert. “Yes, sir. That’s right. Goodnight.”

      And frowning in a meaningful way at his companions, he jerked his head toward the corridor, and, with an air of great severity, led them out.

      “Didn’t want him to see us with that bottle,” he muttered when they were outside in the corridor. “Hell! He’s got the biggest bank in town! Where’d you be if Emmet Wade ever got the idea you’re a liquor-head! . . . Wait a minute!” he said, with the dissonant abruptness that characterized so much of his speech and action. “Come outside here — on the platform: nobody to see you there!”

      “I’ll meet you out there. I’ll go and get another bottle,” whispered Creasman, and disappeared along the darkened corridor in the direction of his berth. In a moment he returned, and the three of them went out upon the platform at the car-end, closed the door behind them and there, among the rocking and galloping noises of the pounding wheels, they took another long drink of the savage liquor. By this time the fiery stuff was leaping, pulsing, pounding the mounting and exuberant illusions of its power and strength through every tissue of their blood and life.

      And outside, floating past their vision the huge pageant of its enchanted and immortal stillness, the old earth of Virginia now lay dreaming in the moon’s white light.

      So here they are now, three atoms on the huge breast of the indifferent earth, three youths out of a little town walled far away within the great rim of the silent mountains, already a distant, lonely dot upon the immense and sleeping visage of the continent. Here they are — three youths bound for the first time towards their image of the distant and enchanted city, sure that even though so many of their comrades had found there only dust and bitterness, the shining victory will be theirs. Here they are hurled onward in the great projectile of the train across the lonely visage of the everlasting earth. Here they are — three nameless grains of life among the man-swarm ciphers of the earth, three faces of the million faces, three drops in the unceasing flood — and each of them a flame, a light, a glory, sure that his destiny is written in the blazing stars, his life shone over by the fortunate watches of the moon, his fame nourished and sustained by the huge earth, whose single darling charge he is, on whose immortal stillness he is flung onward in the night, his glorious fate set in the very brain and forehead of the fabulous, the unceasing city, of whose million-footed life he will tomorrow be a part.

      Therefore they stand upon the rocking platform of the train, wild and dark and jubilant from the fierce liquor they have drunk, but more wild and dark and jubilant from the fury swelling in their hearts, the mad fury pounding in their veins, the savage, exultant СКАЧАТЬ