OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ and exultant fury that keeps mounting, rising, swelling in them all the time!

      Click, clack, clackety-clack; click, clack, clackety-clack; click, clack, clackety-clack; clackety-clackety-clack!

      Hip, hop, hackety-hack; stip, step, rackety-rack; come and fetch it, come and fetch it, hickety-hickety-hack!

      Rock, reel, smash, and swerve; hit it, hit it, on the curve; steady, steady, does the trick, keep her steady as a stick; eat the earth, eat the earth, slam and slug and beat the earth, and let her whir-r, and let her purr, at eighty perr!

      — Whew-w!

      — Wow!

      — God-dam!

      — Put ‘er there, boy!

      — Put ‘er there — whah! — WHAH-H! you ole long-legged frowsle-headed son-of-a-bitch!

      — Whoop-ee! Whah — WHAH-H! Why, Go-d-d-dam!

      — Whee! Vealer rog?

      — Wadja say? Gant hearya!

      — I say ‘ja vealer rog? Wow! Pour it to her, son! Give ‘er the gas! We’re out to see the world! Run her off the god-damn track, boy! We don’t need no rail, do we?

      — Hell no! Which way does this damn train go, anyway, after it leaves Virginia?

      — Maryland.

      — Maryland my —! I don’t want to go to Maryland! To hell with Mary’s land! Also to hell with Mary’s lamb and Mary’s calf and Mary’s blue silk underdrawers! Good old Lucy’s the girl for me — the loosier the better! Give me Lucy any day! Good old Lucy Bowles, God bless her — she’s the pick of the crowd, boys! Here’s to Lucy!

      — Robert! Art there, boy?

      — Aye, aye, sir! Present!

      — Hast seen the damsel down in Lower Seven?

      — I’ sooth, sir, that I have! A comely wench, I trow!

      — Peace, fool! Don’t think, proud Princocke, thou canst snare this dove of innocence into the nets of infamous desire with stale reversions of thy wit! Out, out, vile lendings! An but thou carried’st at thy shrunken waist that monstrous tun of guts thou takest for a brain ‘twould so beslubber this receiving earth with lard as was not seen twixt here and Nottingham since butter shrove! Out, out upon you, scrapings of the pot! A dove, a doe, it is a faultless swan, I say, a pretty thing!

      Now Virginia lay dreaming in the moonlight. In Louisiana bayous the broken moonlight shivers the broken moonlight quivers the light of many rivers lay dreaming in the moonlight beaming in the moonlight dreaming in the moonlight moonlight moonlight seeming in the moonlight moonlight moonlight to be gleaming to be streaming in the moonlight moonlight moonlight moonlight moonlight moonlight moonlight moonlight

      — Mo-hoo-oonlight-oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight oonlight

      — To be seeming to be dreaming in the moonlight!

      WHAM!

      SMASH!

      — Now! God-dam, let her have it! Wow-w!

      With slamming roar, hoarse waugh, and thunderbolted light, the southbound train is gone in one projectile smash of wind-like fury, and the open empty silence of its passing fills us, thrills us, stills us with the vision of Virginia in the moonlight, with the dream-still magic of Virginia in the moon.

      And now, as if with recollected force, the train gains power from the train it passed, leaps, gathers, springs beneath them, smashes on with recollected demon’s fury in the dark . . .

      With slam-bang of devil’s racket and God-dam of curse — give us the bottle, drink, boys, drink! — the power of Virginia lies compacted in the moon. To you, God-dam of devil’s magic and slam-bang of drive, fire-flame of the terrific furnace, slam of rod, storm-stroke of pistoned wheel and thunderbolt of speed, great earth-devourer, 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 —

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