Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (19 page)

Luke parroted all of his father's sermons, but
earnestly and witlessly, without Gant's humor, without his chicanery,
only with his sentimentality.  He lived in a world of symbols,
large, crude, and gaudily painted, labelled "Father,"
"Mother," "Home," "Family,"
"Generosity," "Honor," "Unselfishness,"
made of sugar and molasses, and gummed glutinously with tear-shaped
syrup.

"He's one good boy," the neighbors said.

"He's the cutest thing," said the ladies,
who were charmed by his stutter, his wit, his good nature, his devout
attendance on them.

"That boy's a hustler.  He'll make his
mark," said all the men in town.

And it was as the smiling hustler that he wanted to
be known.  He read piously all the circulars the Curtis
Publishing Company sent to its agents: he posed himself in the
various descriptive attitudes that were supposed to promote
business--the proper manner of "approach," the most
persuasive manner of drawing the journal from the bag, the animated
description of its contents, in which he was supposed to be steeped
as a result of his faithful reading--"the good salesman,"
the circulars said, "should know in and out the article he is
selling"--a knowledge that Luke avoided, but which he replaced
with eloquent invention of his own.

The literal digestion of these instructions resulted
in one of the most fantastical exhibitions of print-vending ever
seen: fortified by his own unlimited cheek, and by the pious axioms
of the exhortations that "the good salesman will never take no
for his answer," that he should "stick to his prospect"
even if rebuffed, that he should "try to get the customer's
psychology," the boy would fall into step with an unsuspecting
pedestrian, open the broad sheets of The Post under the man's nose,
and in a torrential harangue, sown thickly with stuttering speech,
buffoonery, and ingratiation, delivered so rapidly that the man could
neither accept nor reject the magazine, hound him before a grinning
public down the length of a street, backing him defensively into a
wall, and taking from the victim's eager fingers the five-cent coin
that purchased his freedom.

"Yes, sir.  Yes, sir," he would begin
in a sonorous voice, dropping wide-leggedly into the "prospect's"
stride.  "This week's edition of The Saturday Evening Post,
five cents, only a nickel, p-p-p-purchased weekly by t-t-two million
readers.  In this week's issue you have eighty-six pages of
f-f-fact and fiction, to say n-n-nothing of the advertisements. 
If you c-c-c-can't read you'll get m-m-more than your money's worth
out of the p-p-pictures.  On page 13 this week, we have a very
fine article, by I-I-I-Isaac F. Marcosson, the f-f-f-famous traveller
and writer on politics; on page 29, you have a story by Irvin S.
Cobb, the g-g-g-greatest living humorist, and a new story of the
prize-ring by J-J-Jack London.  If you b-b-bought it in a book,
it'd c-c-cost you a d-d-dollar-and-a-half."

He had, besides these chance victims, an extensive
clientry among the townsfolk.  Swinging briskly and cheerily
down the street, full of greetings and glib repartee, he would accost
each of the grinning men by a new title, in a rich stammering tenor
voice:

"Colonel, how are you!  Major--here you
are, a week's reading hot off the press.  Captain, how's the
boy?"

"How are you, son?"

"Couldn't be better, General--slick as a puppy's
belly!"

And they would roar with wheezing, red-faced,
Southern laughter:

"By God, he's a good 'un.  Here, son, give
me one of the damn things.  I don't want it, but I'll buy it
just to hear you talk."

He was full of pungent and racy vulgarity: he had,
more than any of the family, a Rabelaisian earthiness that surged in
him with limitless energy, charging his tongue with unpremeditated
comparisons, Gargantuan metaphors.  Finally, he wet the bed
every night in spite of Eliza's fretting complaints: it was the final
touch of his stuttering, whistling, cheerful, vital, and comic
personality--he was Luke, the unique, Luke, the incomparable: he was,
in spite of his garrulous and fidgeting nervousness, an intensely
likable person--and he really had in him a bottomless well of
affection.  He wanted bounteous praise for his acts, but he had
a deep, genuine kindliness and tenderness.

Every week, on Thursday, in Gant's dusty little
office, he would gather the grinning cluster of small boys who bought
The Post from him, and harangue them before he sent them out on their
duties:

"Well, have you thought of what you're going to
tell them yet?  You know you can't sit around on your little
tails and expect them to look you up.  Have you got a spiel
worked out yet?  How do you approach 'em, eh?" he said,
turning fiercely to a stricken small boy.  "Speak up, speak
up, G-G-G-God-damn it--don't s-s-stand there looking at me. 
Haw!" he said, laughing with sudden wild idiocy, "look at
that face, won't you?"

Gant surveyed the proceedings from afar with
Jannadeau, grinning.

"All right, Christopher Columbus,"
continued Luke, good-humoredly. "What do you tell 'em, son?"

The boy cleared his throat timidly:  "Mister,
do you want to buy a copy of The Saturday Evening Post?"

"Oh, twah-twah," said Luke, with mincing
delicacy, as the boys sniggered, "sweet twah-twah!  Do you
expect them to buy with a spiel like that?  My God, where are
your brains?  Sail into them. Tackle them, and don't take no for
an answer.  Don't ask them if they WANT to buy.  Dive into
them:  'Here you are, sir--hot off the press.'  Jesus
Christ," he yelled, looking at the distant court-house clock
with sudden fidget, "we should have been out an hour ago. 
Come on--don't stand there: here are your papers.  How many do
you want, you little Kike?"--for he had several Jews in his
employ: they worshipped him and he was very fond of them--he liked
their warmth, richness, humor.

"Twenty."

"Twenty!" he yelled.  "You little
loafer--you'll t-t-take fifty. G-g-go on, you c-c-can sell 'em this
afternoon.  By G-G-God, papa," he said, pointing to the
Jews, as Gant entered the office, "it l-l-looks like the Last
S-S-Supper, don't it?  All right!" he said, smacking across
the buttocks a small boy who had bent for his quota.  "Don't
stick it in my face."  They shrieked with laughter. "Dive
in to them now.  Don't let 'em get away from you." 
And, laughing and excited, he would send them out into the streets.

To this land of employment and this method of
exploitation Eugene was now initiated.  He loathed the work with
a deadly, an inexplicable loathing.  But something in him
festered deeply at the idea of disposing of his wares by the process
of making such a wretched little nuisance of himself that riddance
was purchased only at the price of the magazine.  He writhed
with shame and humiliation, but he stuck desperately to his task, a
queer curly-headed passionate little creature, who raced along by the
side of an astonished captive, pouring out of his dark eager face a
hurricane of language.  And men, fascinated somehow by this
strange eloquence from a little boy, bought.

Sometimes the heavy paunch-bellied Federal judge,
sometimes an attorney, a banker would take him home, bidding him to
perform for their wives, the members of their families, giving him
twenty-five cents when he was done, and dismissing him.  "What
do you think of that!" they said.

His first and nearest sales made, in the town, he
would make the long circle on the hills and in the woods along the
outskirts, visiting the tubercular sanitariums, selling the magazines
easily and quickly--"like hot cakes" as Luke had it--to
doctors and nurses, to white unshaven, sensitive-faced Jews, to the
wisp of a rake, spitting his rotten lungs into a cup, to good-looking
young women who coughed slightly from time to time, but who smiled at
him from their chairs, and let their warm soft hands touch his
slightly as they paid him.

Once, at a hillside sanitarium, two young New York
Jews had taken him to the room of one of them, closed the door behind
him, andassaulted him, tumbling him on the bed, while one drew forth
a pocket knife and informed him he was going to perform a caponizing
operation on him.  They were two young men bored with the hills,
the town, the deadly regime of their treatment, and it occurred to
him years later that they had concocted the business, days ahead, in
their dull lives, living for the excitement and terror they would
arouse in him.  His response was more violent than they had
bargained for: he went mad with fear, screamed, and fought insanely. 
They were weak as cats, he squirmed out of their grasp and off the
bed cuffing and clawing tigerishly, striking and kicking them with
blind and mounting rage.  He was released by a nurse who
unlocked the door and led him out into the sunlight, the two young
consumptives, exhausted and frightened, remaining in their room. 
He was nauseated by fear and by the impacts of his fists on their
leprous bodies.

But the little mound of nickels and dimes and
quarters chinked pleasantly in his pockets: leg-weary and exhausted
he would stand before a gleaming fountain burying his hot face in an
iced drink. Sometimes conscience-tortured, he would steal an hour
away from the weary streets and go into the library for a period of
enchantment and oblivion: he was often discovered by his watchful and
bustling brother, who drove him out to his labor again, taunting and
spurring him into activity.

"Wake up!  You're not in Fairyland. 
Go after them."

Eugene's face was of no use to him as a mask: it was
a dark pool in which every pebble of thought and feeling left its
circle?his shame, his distaste for his employment was obvious,
although he tried to conceal it: he was accused of false pride, told
that he was "afraid of a little honest work," and reminded
of the rich benefits he had received from his big-hearted parents.

He turned desperately to Ben.  Sometimes Ben,
loping along the streets of the town, met him, hot, tired, dirty,
wearing his loaded canvas bag, scowled fiercely at him, upbraided him
for his unkempt appearance, and took him into a lunch-room for
something to eat--rich foaming milk, fat steaming kidney-beans, thick
apple-pie.

Both Ben and Eugene were by nature aristocrats. 
Eugene had just begun to feel his social status--or rather his lack 
of one; Ben had felt it for years.  The feeling at bottom might
have resolved itself simply into a desire for the companionship of
elegant and lovely women: neither was able, nor would have dared, to
confess this, and Eugene was unable to confess that he was
susceptible to the social snub, or the pain of caste inferiority: any
suggestion that the companionship of elegant people was preferable to
the fellowship of a world of Tarkintons, and its blousy daughters,
would have been hailed with heavy ridicule by the family, as another
indication of false and undemocratic pride.  He would have been
called "Mr. Vanderbilt" or "the Prince of Wales."

Ben, however, was not to be intimidated by their
cant, or deceived  by their twaddle.  He saw them with
bitter clarity, answered their pretensions with soft mocking
laughter, and a brief nod upwards and to the side of the companion to
whom he communicated all his contemptuous observation--his dark
satiric angel:  "Oh, my God! Listen to that, won't you?"

There was behind his scowling quiet eyes, something
strange and fierce and unequivocal that frightened them: besides, he
had secured for himself the kind of freedom they valued most?the
economic freedom--and he spoke as he felt, answering their virtuous
reproof with fierce quiet scorn.

One day, he stood, smelling of nicotine, before the
fire, scowling darkly at Eugene who, grubby and tousled, had slung
his heavy bag over his shoulder, and was preparing to depart.

"Come here, you little bum," he said. 
"When did you wash your hands last?"  Scowling
fiercely, he made a sudden motion as if to strike the boy, but he
finished instead by re-tying, with his hard delicate hands, his tie.

"In God's name, mama," he burst out
irritably to Eliza, "haven't you got a clean shirt to give him? 
You know, he ought to have one every month or so."

"What do you mean?  What do you mean?"
said Eliza with comic rapidity, looking up from a basket of socks she
was darning.  "I gave him that one last Tuesday."

"You little thug!" he growled, looking at
Eugene with a fierce pain in his eyes.  "Mama, for heaven's
sake, why don't you send him to the barber's to get that lousy hair
cut off?  By God, I'll pay for it, if you don't want to spend
the money."

She pursed her lips angrily and continued to darn. 
Eugene looked at him dumbly, gratefully.  After Eugene had gone,
the quiet one smoked moodily for a time, drawing the fragrant smoke
in long gulps down into his thin lungs.  Eliza, recollective and
hurt at what had been said, worked on.

"What are you trying to do with your kid, mama?"
he said in a hard quiet voice, after a silence.  "Do you
want to make a tramp out of him?"

"What do you mean?  What do you mean?"

"Do you think it's right to send him out on the
streets with every little thug in town?"

"Why, I don't know what you're talking about,
boy," she said impatiently.  "It's no disgrace for a
boy to do a little honest work, and no one thinks so."