Of Time and the River (12 page)

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 to-morrow 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 and unutterable fury working like a madness in the adyts of their soul. And the great wheels smash and pound beneath their feet, the great wheels pound and smash and give a rhyme to madness, a tongue to hunger and desire, a certitude to all the savage, drunken, 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 pur-r, at eighty per-r!

—Whew-w!

—Wow!

—God-dam!

—Put ‘er there, boy!

—Put ‘er there—whah
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
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.