Of Time and the River (8 page)

“So whom are you going to vote for, Jim?” said Mr. Candler smiling.

“Who? Me?” said Mr. Flood with a coarse grin. “Why, hell, you ought to know that without asking. Me—I’m a Democrat, ain’t I?— don’t I publish a Democratic newspaper? I’m going to vote for Cox, of course.”

And, in the burst of laughter that followed, some one could be heard saying jestingly:

“And who’s going to win the Series, Jim? Some one told me you’re for Brooklyn!”

“Brooklyn!” Mr. Flood jeered wheezingly. “Brooklyn has just the same kind of chance Cox has—the chance a snowball has in hell! Brooklyn! They’re in just the same fix the Democrats are in— they’ve got nothing on the ball. When Speaker and that Cleveland gang get through with them, Brooklyn is going to look just like Cox the day after the election. Brooklyn,” he concluded with brutal conviction, “hasn’t got a chance.”

And again the debate between the men grew eager, animated and vociferous: they shouted, laughed, denied, debated, jeered good- naturedly, and the great train hurtled onward in the darkness, and the everlasting earth was still.

And other men, and other voices, words, and moments such as these would come, would pass, would vanish and would be forgotten in the huge record and abyss of time. And the great trains of America would hurtle on through darkness over the lonely, everlasting earth—the earth which only was eternal—and on which our fathers and our brothers had wandered, their lives so brief, so lonely, and so strange—into whose substance at length they all would be compacted. And the great trains would hurtle on for ever over the silent and eternal earth—fixed in that design of everlasting stillness and unceasing change. The trains would hurtle onward bearing other lives like these, all brought together for an instant between two points of time—and then all lost, all vanished, broken and forgotten. The trains would bear them onward to their million destinations—each to the fortune, fame, or happiness he wished, whatever it was that he was looking for—but whether any to a sure success, a certain purpose, or the thing he sought—what man could say? All that he knew was that these men, these words, this moment would vanish, be forgotten—and that great wheels would hurtle on for ever. And the earth be still.

Mr. Flood shifted his gouty weight carefully with a movement of his fat arm, grunting painfully as he did so. This delicate operation completed, he stared sharply and intently at the boy again and at length said bluntly:

“You’re one of those Gant boys, ain’t you? Ain’t you Ben’s brother?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy answered. “That’s right.”

“Which one are you?” Mr. Flood said with this same brutal directness. “You ain’t the one that stutters, are you?”

“No,” one of the other men interrupted with a laugh, but in a decided tone. “He’s not the one. You’re thinking of Luke.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Flood stupidly. “Is Luke the one that stutters?”

“Yes,” the boy said, “that’s Luke. I’m Eugene.”

“Oh,” Mr. Flood said heavily. “I reckon you’re the youngest one.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy answered.

“Well,” said Mr. Flood with an air of finality, “I didn’t know which one you were, but I knew you were one of them. I knew I’d seen you somewhere.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy answered. He was about to go on, hesitated for a moment, and suddenly blurted out: “I used to carry a route on The Courier when you owned it. I guess that’s how you remembered me.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Flood stupidly, “you did? Yes, that’s it, all right. I remember now.” And he continued to look at the boy with his bulging stare of comic stupefaction and for a moment there was silence save for the pounding of the wheels upon the rail.

“How many of you boys are there?” The swarthy and important- looking man who had previously been addressed as Emmet now spoke curiously: “There must be five or six in all.”

“No,” the boy said, “there’s only three now. There’s Luke and Steve and me.”

“Oh, Steve, Steve,” the little man said with an air of crisp finality, as if this was the name that had been at the tip of his tongue all the time. “Steve was the oldest, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” said the boy.

“Whatever became of Steve, anyway?” the man said. “I don’t believe I’ve seen him in ten or fifteen years. He doesn’t live at home any more, does he?”

“No, sir,” the boy said. “He lives in Indiana.”

“Does he for a fact?” said the little man, as if this was a rare and curious bit of information. “What’s Steve doing out there? Is he in business?”

For a moment the boy was going to say, “No, he runs a pool room and lives up over it with his wife and children,” but feeling ashamed to say this, he said:

“I think he runs some kind of cigar store out there.”

“Is that so?” the man answered with an air of great interest. “Well,” he went on in a moment in a conciliatory tone, “Steve was always smart enough. He had brains enough to do almost anything if he tried.”

Emmet Wade, the man who had asked the boy all these questions, was a quick, pompous little figure, corpulently built, but so short in stature as to be almost dwarfish-looking. His skin was curiously and unpleasantly swarthy, and save for a fringe of thin black hair at either side, his head was completely bald. In that squat figure, the suggestion of pompous authority and mountainous conceit was so pronounced that even in repose, as now, the whole man seemed to strut. He was, by virtue of that fortuitous chance and opportunity which has put so many small men in great positions, the president of the leading bank of the community. Even as he sat there in the smoking compartment, with his short fat legs crossed, the boy could see him sitting at his desk in the bank, swinging back and forth in his swivel chair thoughtfully, his pudgy hands folded behind his head as he dictated a letter to his obsequious secretary.

“Where’s old Luke? What’s he doing, anyway?” another of the men demanded suddenly, beginning to chuckle even as he spoke. The speaker was the florid-faced, somewhat countrified-looking man already noted, who wore the string neck-tie and spoke with the rhetorical severity of the small-town politician. He was one of the town commissioners and in his hearty voice and easy manner there was a more genial quality than any of the others had. “I haven’t seen that boy in years,” he continued. “Some one was asking me just the other day what had become of him.”

“He’s got a job selling farm machinery and lighting equipment,” the boy answered.

“Is that so?” the man replied with this same air of friendly interest. “Where is he located? He doesn’t get home very often, does he?”

“No, sir,” the boy said, “not very often. He comes in every two or three weeks, but he doesn’t stay home long at a time. His territory is down through South Carolina and Georgia—all through there.”

“What did you say he was selling?” said Mr. Flood, who had been staring at the boy fixedly during all this conversation with his heavy expression of a slow, intent and brutal stupefaction.

“He sells lighting systems and pumps and farm equipment and machinery—for farms,” the boy said awkwardly.

“That’s Luke—who does that?” said Mr. Flood after a moment, when this information had had time to penetrate.

“Yes, sir. That’s Luke.”

“And he’s the one that stutters?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The one that used to have the agency for The Saturday Evening Post and did all that talking when he sold ‘em to you?”

“Yes, sir. That’s Luke.”

“And what d’you say he’s doing now?” said Mr. Flood heavily. “Selling farm machinery?”

“Yes, sir. That’s what he’s doing.”

“Then, by God,” said Mr. Flood, with a sudden and explosive emphasis which, after his former attitude of heavy, brutal stupefaction, was startling, “he’ll do it!” The other men laughed and Mr. Flood shook his ponderous, crimson head slowly from side to side to emphasize his conviction in the matter.

“If any one can sell ‘em, he’ll do it,” he said positively. “That boy could sell Palm Beach suits to the Esquimaux. They’d have to buy ‘em just to keep him from talking them to death.”

“I’ll tell you what I saw him do one time,” said the politician, shifting his weight a little in order to accommodate himself more comfortably to the motion of the train. “I was standing in front of the post office one day talking to Dave Redmond about some property he owned out on the Haw Creek Road—oh, it must have been almost fifteen years ago—when here he comes hustling along, you know, with a big bundle of his papers under his arm. Well, he sails right into us, talking about a mile a minute and going so fast neither of us had a chance to get a word in edgeways. ‘Here you are, gentlemen,’ he says, ‘hot off the press, just the thing you’ve been waiting for, this week’s edition of The Saturday Evening Post, five cents, only a nickel, the twentieth part of a dollar.’ By that time,” said Mr. Candler, “he had the thing all opened up and shoved up right under Dave Redmond’s nose, and he was turning the pages and telling him all about the different pieces it had in it and who wrote them and what was in them, and what a bargain it was for five cents. ‘W-w-w-why,’ he says, ‘if you b-b- b-bought it in a book, why it’d cost you a d-d-d-dollar and a half and then,’ he says, ‘it wouldn’t be half as good.’ Well, Dave was getting sort of red in the face by that time,” Mr. Candler said, “and I could see he was sort of annoyed at being interrupted, but the boy kept right on with his spiel and wouldn’t give up. ‘I don’t want it,’ says Dave, ‘I’m busy,’ and he tries to turn away from him, but Luke moves right around to the other side and goes after him about twice as hard as before. ‘Go on, go on,’ says Dave. ‘We’re busy! I don’t want it! I can’t read!’ he says. ‘All right,’ says Luke, ‘then you can look at the p-p-p-pictures. Why, the pictures alone,’ he says, ‘are w-w-w-worth a half a dollar. It’s the b-b-b-bargain of a lifetime,’ he says. Well, the boy was pressing him pretty hard and I guess Dave lost his temper. He sort of knocked the magazine away from him and shouted, ‘Damn it, I told you that I didn’t want it, and I mean it! Now go on! We’re busy.’ Well,” said Mr. Candler, “Luke didn’t say a word for a moment. He took his magazine and put it under his arm again, and he just stood there looking at Dave Redmond for a moment, and then he said, just as quiet as you please, ‘All right, sir. You’re the doctor. But I think you’re going to regret it!’ And then he turned and walked away from us. Well, sir,” said Mr. Candler, laughing, “Dave Redmond’s face was a study. You could see he felt pretty small to think he had shouted at the boy like that, and acted as he did. And Luke hadn’t gone twenty feet before Dave Redmond called him back. ‘Here, son,’ he says, diving his hand down into his pocket, ‘give me one of those things! I may never read it but it’s worth a dollar just to hear you talk.’ And he gave him a dollar, too, and made him take it,” Mr. Candler said, “and from that day on Dave Redmond was one of the biggest boosters that Luke had. . . . ‘I think you’re going to regret it,’” said Mr. Candler again, laughing at the memory. “That’s the thing that did it—that’s what got him—the way the boy just looked at him and said, ‘All right, sir, but I think you’re going to regret it.’ That did the trick, all right.” And pleased with his story and the memory it evoked, Mr. Candler looked mildly out of the window for a moment, smiling.

“That was Luke that done that?” Mr. Flood demanded hoarsely after a moment, with his air of brutal and rather stunned surprise. “The one that stutters?”

“Yes, that’s the one all right,” said Mr. Candler. “That’s who it was.”

Mr. Flood pondered this information for a moment with his bulging eyes still fastened on Mr. Candler in their look of stupefied curiosity. Then, as the full import of what he had heard at length soaked into his intelligence, he shook his great coarse head once, slowly, in a movement of ponderous but emphatic satisfaction, and said with hoarse conviction:

“Well, he’s a good ‘un! If any one can sell ‘em, he’s the one.”

This judgment was followed by a brief but heavy pause, which was broken in a moment by the voice of the pompous, swarthy little man who, in a tone of detached curiosity, said:

“Whatever became of that other boy—the one who used to work there in The Courier office when you owned it? What was his name, anyway?”

“Ben,” said Mr. Flood heavily, but without hesitation. “That was Ben.” Here he coughed in an alarming, phlegmy sort of way, cleared his throat and spat chokingly into the spittoon at his feet, wiped his mouth with his wadded handkerchief and in a moment, panting for breath, wheezed:

“Ben was the one that worked for me.”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” the swarthy little man said rapidly, as if now it all came back to him. “Ben! That was the one! Whatever became of him? I haven’t seen him recently.”

“He’s dead,” said Mr. Flood, still wheezing rapidly for breath and gazing at the spittoon. “That’s the reason you haven’t seen him,” he said seriously. And suddenly, as if the long-awaited moment had come, he bent over, torn by a fit of choking and phlegmy sounds of really astounding proportions. When it was over, he raised himself, settled back slowly and painfully in his seat, and for a moment, with closed eyes, did nothing but wheeze rapidly. In a moment, still with closed eyes, he gasped almost inaudibly:

“Ben was the one that died.”

“Oh, yes! I do remember now,” the pompous little man declared, nodding his head sharply with an air of conviction. “That’s been some time ago, hasn’t it?” he said to the boy.

“He died two years ago,” the boy replied, “during the war.”

“Oh, that’s so, he did! I remember now!” the man cried instantly, with an air of recollection that somehow said that he remembered nothing. “He was overseas at the time, wasn’t he?” he asked smoothly.

“No, sir,” the boy answered. “He was at home. He died of pneumonia—during that big epidemic.”

“I know,” the man said regretfully. “That got a lot of the boys. Ben was in service at the time, wasn’t he?”

“No,” the boy answered. “He never got in. Luke was the one who was in service. Ben tried to get in twice but he couldn’t pass the examinations.”

“Is that so?” the man said vaguely. “Well, I was mighty sorry to hear about his death. Old Ben was one fine boy!”

Nothing was said for a moment.