You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
"Well I'll be dogged!" he said, astounded. "What d'you know about that!"
The banker now leaned forward and tapped Nebraska confidentially on the knee. He talked to him persuasively, in friendly wise, urging him to invest his savings in the real estate speculations of the town. He brought up all his heaviest artillery of logic and mathematics, drawing forth his pencil and note-book to figure out just how much a given sum of money could be increased if it was shrewdly invested now in this or that piece of property, and then sold when the time was right.
"You can't go wrong!" said Jarvis Riggs, a little feverishly. "The town is bound to grow. Why, Libya Hill is only at the beginning of its development. You bring your money back home, my boy, and let it go to work for you! You'll see!"
This went on for some time. But in the face of all their urgings Nebraska remained his characteristic self. He was respectful and good-natured, but a little dubious, and fundamentally stubborn.
"I already got me a farm out in Zebulon," he said, and, grinning--"It's paid fer, too! When I git through playin' baseball, I'm comin' back an' settle down out there an' farm it. It's three hundred acres of the purtiest bottom land you ever seen. That's all I want. I couldn't use no more."
As Nebraska talked to them in his simple, homely way, he spoke as a man of the earth for whom the future opened up serenely, an independent, stubborn man who knew what he wanted, a man who was firmly rooted, established, secure against calamity and want. He was completely detached from the fever of the times--from the fever of the boom-mad town as well as from the larger fever of the nation. The others talked incessantly about land, but George saw that Nebraska Crane was the only one who still conceived of the land as a place on which to live, and of living on the land as a way of life.
At last Nebraska detached himself from the group and said he was going back to take a smoke. George started to follow him. As he passed down the aisle behind his friend and came abreast of the last seat, suddenly a quiet, toneless voice said:
"Good evening, Webber."
He stopped and spun round. The blind man was seated there before him. He had almost forgotten about him. The blind man had not moved as he spoke. He was still leaning a little forward on his cane, his thin, white face held straight before him as if he were still listening for something. George felt now, as he had always felt, the strange fascination in that evil shadow of a smile that hovered about the corners of the blind man's mouth. He paused, then said:
"Judge Bland."
"Sit down, son." And like a child under the spell of the Pied Piper, he sat down. "Let the dead bury their dead. Come sit among the blind."
The words were uttered tonelessly, yet their cruel and lifeless contempt penetrated nakedly throughout the car. The other men stopped talking and turned as if they had received an electric shock. George did not know what to say; in the embarrassment of the moment he blurted out:
"I--I--there are a lot of people on the train from home. I--I've been talking to them--Mayor Kennedy, and----"
The blind man, never moving, in his terrible toneless voice that carried to all ears, broke in:
"Yes, I know. As eminent a set of sons-of-bitches as were ever gathered together in the narrow confines of a single pullman-car."
The whole car listened in an appalled silence. The group in the middle looked at one another with fear in their eyes, and in a moment they began 'talking feverishly again.
"I hear you were in France again last year," the voice now said. "And did you find the French whores any different from the homegrown variety?"
The naked words, with their toneless evil, pierced through the car like a flash of sheer terror. All conversation stopped. Everyone was stunned, frozen into immobility.
"You'll find there's not much difference," Judge Bland observed calmly and in the same tone. "Syphilis makes the whole world kin. And if you want to lose your eyesight, you can do it in this great democracy as well as anywhere on earth."
The whole car was as quiet as death. In another moment the stunned faces turned towards one another, and the men began to talk in furtive whispers.
Through all of this the expression on that white and sunken face had never altered, and the shadow of that ghostly smile still lingered around the mouth. But now, low and casually, he said to the young man:
"How are you, son? I'm glad to see you." And in that simple phrase, spoken by the blind man, there was the suggestion of a devilish humour, although his expression did not change a bit.
"You--you've been in Baltimore, Judge Bland?"
"Yes, I still come up to Hopkins now and then. It does no good, of course. You see, son," the tone was low and friendly now, "I've gone completely blind since I last saw you."
"I didn't know. But you don't mean that you----"
"Oh, utterly! Utterly!" replied Judge Bland, and all at once he threw his sightless face up and laughed with sardonic glee, displaying blackened rims of teeth, as if the joke was too good to be kept. "My dear boy, I assure you that I am utterly blind. I can no longer distinguish one of our most prominent local bastards two feet off--Now, Jarvis!" he suddenly cried out in a chiding voice in the direction of the unfortunate Riggs, who had loudly resumed his discussion of property values--"you know that's not true! Why, man, I can tell by the look in your eyes that you're lying!" And again he lifted his face and was shaken by devilish, quiet laughter. "Excuse the interruption, son," he went on. "I believe the subject of our discourse was bastardy. Why, can you believe it?"--he leaned forward again his long fingers playing gently on the polished ridges of his stick--"where bastardy is concerned, I find I can no longer trust my eyes at all. I rely exclusively on the sense of smell. And"--for the first time his face was sunken deliberately in weariness and disgust--"it is enough. A sense of smell is all you need." Abruptly changing now, he said: "How are the folks?"
"Why--Aunt Maw's dead. I--I'm going home to the funeral."
"Dead, is she?"
That was all he said. None of the usual civilities, no expression of polite regret, just that and nothing more. Then, after a moment:
"So you're going down to bury her." It was a statement, and he said it reflectively, as though meditating upon it; then--"And do you think you can go home again?"
George was a little startled and puzzled: "Why--I don't understand. How do you mean, Judge Bland?"
There was another flare of that secret, evil laughter. "I mean, do you think you can really go home again?" Then, sharp, cold, peremptory--"Now answer me! Do you think you can?"
"Why--why yes! Why--" the young man was desperate, almost frightened now, and, earnestly, beseechingly, he said--"why look here, Judge Bland--I haven't done anything--honestly I haven't!"
Again the low, demonic laughter: "You're sure?"
Frantic now with the old terror which the man had always inspired in him as a boy: "Why--why of course I'm sure! Look here, Judge Bland--in the name of God, what have I done?" He thought desperately of a dozen wild, fantastic things, feeling a sickening and overwhelming consciousness of guilt, without knowing why. He thought: "Has he heard about my book? Does he know I wrote about the town? Is that what he means?"
The blind man cackled thinly to himself, enjoying with evil tenderness his little cat's play with the young man: "The guilty fleeth where no man pursueth. Is that it, son?"
Frankly distracted: "Why--why--I'm not guilty!" Angrily: "Why damn it, I'm not guilty of anything!" Passionately, excitedly: "I can hold up my head with any man! I can look the whole damn world in the eye! I make no apologies to----"
He stopped short, seeing the evil ghost-shadow of a smile at the corners of the blind man's mouth. "That disease!" he thought--"the thing that ruined his eyes--maybe--maybe--why, yes--the man is crazy!" Then he spoke, slowly, simply:
"Judge Bland." He rose from the seat. "Good-bye, Judge Bland." The smile still played about the blind man's mouth, but he answered with a new note of kindness in his voice:
"Good-bye, son." There was a barely
* * *
George walked quickly away with thudding heart and trembling limbs. What had Judge Bland meant when he asked, "Do you think you can go home again?" And what had been the meaning of that evil, silent, mocking laughter? What had he heard? What did he know? And these others--did they know, too?
He soon learned that his fear and panic in the blind man's presence were shared by all the people in the car. Even the passengers who had, never seen Judge Bland before had heard his naked, brutal words, and they were now horrified by the sight of him. As for the rest, the men from Libya Hill, this feeling was greatly enhanced, sharpened by all that they knew of him. He had pursued his life among them with insolent shamelessness. Though he still masked in all the outward aspects of respectability, he was in total disrepute, and yet he met the opinion of the town with such cold and poisonous contempt that everyone held him in a kind of terrified respect. As for Parson Flack, Jarvis Riggs, and Mayor Kennedy, they were afraid of him because his blind eyes saw straight through them. His sudden appearance in the car, where none had expected to meet him, had aroused in all of them a sense of stark, underlying terror.
As George went into the washroom suddenly, be came upon the Mayor cleaning his false teeth in the basin. The man's plump face, which George had always known in the guise of cheerful, hearty amiability, was all caved in. Hearing a sound behind him, the Mayor turned upon the newcomer. For a moment there was nothing but nameless fright in his weak brown eyes. He mumbled frantically, incoherently, holding his false teeth in his trembling fingers. Like a man who did not know what he was doing, he brandished them in a grotesque yet terrible gesture indicative of--God knows what!--but despair and terror were both in it. Then he put the teeth into his mouth again, smiled feebly, and muttered apologetically, with some counterfeit of his usual geniality:
"Ho, ho!--well, son! You caught me that time, all right! A man can't talk without his teeth!"
The same thing was now apparent everywhere. George saw it in the look of an eye, the movement of a hand, the give-away expression of a face in repose. The merchant, Sol Isaacs, took him aside and whispered:
"Have you heard what they're saying about the bank?" He looked around quickly and checked himself, as if afraid of the furtive sound of his own voice. "Oh, everything's O.K.! Sure it is! They just went a little too fast there for a while! Things are rather quiet right now--but they'll pick up!"
Among all of them there was the same kind of talk that George had heard before. "It's worth all of that," they told each other eagerly. "It'll bring twice as much in a year's time." They caught him by the lapel in the most friendly and hearty fashion and said he ought to settle down in Libya Hill and stay for good--"Greatest place on earth, you know!" They made their usual assured pronouncements upon finance, banking, market trends, and property values. But George sensed now that down below all this was just utter, naked, frantic terror--the terror of men who know that they are ruined and are afraid to admit it, even to themselves.
It was after midnight, and the great train was rushing south across Virginia in the moonlight. The people in the little towns lay in their beds and heard the mournful whistle, then the sudden roar as the train went through, and they turned over restlessly and dreamed of fair and distant cities.
In K19 most of the passengers had retired to their berths. Nebraska Crane had turned in early, but George was still up, and so, too, were the banker, the Mayor, and the political boss. Crass, world-weary, unimaginative fellows that they were, they were nevertheless too excited by something of the small boy in them that had never died to go to bed at their usual hour aboard a train, and were now drawn together for companionship in the smoke-fogged washroom. Behind the green curtains the complex of male voices rose and fell in talk as they told their endless washroom stories. Quietly, furtively, with sly delight, they began to recall unsavoury anecdotes remembered from the open and shameless life of Judge Rumford Bland, and at the end of each recital there would be a choking burst of strong laughter.
When the laughter and the slapping of thighs subsided, Parson Flack leaned forward again, eager to tell another. In a voice that was subdued, confidential, almost conspiratorial, he began:
"And do you remember the time that he----?"
Swiftly the curtain was drawn aside, all heads jerked up, and Judge Bland entered.
"Now, Parson"--said he in a chiding voice--"remember what?" Before the blind, cold stare of that emaciated face the seated men were silent. Something stronger than fear was in their eyes.
"Remember what?" he said again, a trifle harshly. He stood before them erect and fragile, both hands balanced on the head of the cane which he held anchored to the floor in front of him. He turned to Jarvis Riggs: "Remember when you established what you boasted was 'the fastest-growing bank in all the state'--and weren't too particular what it grew on?" He turned back to Parson Flack: "Remember when one of 'the boys', as you like to call them--you always look out for 'the boys', don't you, Parson?--remember when one of 'the boys' borrowed money from 'the fastest-growing bank' to buy two hundred acres on that hill across the river?"--he turned to the Mayor--"and sold the land to the town for a new cemetery?...Though why," he turned his face to Parson Flack again, "the dead should have to go so far to bury their dead I do not know!"
He paused impressively, like a country lawyer getting ready to launch his peroration to a jury.
"Remember what?"--the voice rose suddenly, high and sharp. "Do I remember, Parson, how you've run the town through all these years? Do I remember what a good thing you've made of politics? You've never aspired to public office, have you, Parson? Oh, no--you're much too modest. But you know how to pick the public-spirited citizens who do aspire, and whose great hearts pant with eagerness to serve their fellow men! Ah, yes. It's a very nice little private business, isn't it, Parson? And all 'the boys' are stockholders and get their cut of the profits--is that the way of it, Parson?...Remember what?" he cried again. "Do I remember now the broken fragments of a town that waits and fears and schemes to put off the day of its impending ruin? Why, Parson, yes--I can remember all these things. And yet I had no part in them, for, after all, I am a humble man. Oh"--with a deprecating nod--" a little nigger squeezing here and there, a little income out of Niggertown, a few illegal lendings, a comfortable practice in small usury--yet my wants were few, my tastes were very simple. I was always satisfied with, say, a modest five per cent a week. So I am not in the big money, Parson. I remember many things, but I see now I have spent my substance, wasted all my talents in riotous living--while pious Puritans have virtuously betrayed their town and given their whole-souled services to the ruin of their fellow men."
Again there was an ominous pause, and when he went on his voice was low, almost casual in its toneless irony:
"I am afraid I have been at best a giddy fellow, Parson, and that my old age will be spent in memories of trivial things--of various merry widows who came to town, of poker chips, racehorses, cards, and rattling dice, of bourbon, Scotch, and rye--all the forms of hellishness that saintly fellows, Parson, who go to prayer-meeting every week, know nothing of. So I suppose I'll warm my old age with the memories of my own sinfulness--and be buried at last, like all good men and true, among more public benefactors in the town's expensive graveyard on the hill...But I also remember other things, Parson. So can you. And maybe in my humble sphere I, too, have served a purpose--of being the wild oat of more worthy citizens."
They sat in utter silence, their frightened, guilty eyes all riveted upon his face, and each man felt as if those cold, unseeing eyes had looked straight through him. For a moment more Judge Bland just stood there, and, slowly, without a change of muscle in the blankness of his face, the ghostly smile began to hover like a shadow at the corners of his sunken mouth.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he said. He turned, and with his walking-stick he caught and held the curtain to one side. "I'll be seeing you."
All through the ghostly stillness of the land, the train made on for ever its tremendous noise, fused of a thousand sounds, and they called back to him forgotten memories: old songs, old faces, old memories, and all strange, wordless, and unspoken things men know and live and feel, and never find a language for--the legend of dark time, the sad brevity of their days, the unknowable but haunting miracle of life itself. He heard again, as he had heard throughout his childhood, the pounding wheel, the tolling bell, the whistle-wail, and he remembered how these sounds, coming to him from the river's edge in the little town of his boyhood, had always evoked for him their tongueless prophecy of wild and secret joy, their glorious promises of new lands, morning, and a shining city. But now the lonely cry of the great train was speaking to him with an equal strangeness of return. For he was going home again.
The undertone of terror with which he had gone to bed, the sadness of the foreshadowed changes in the town, the sombre prospect of the funeral to-morrow, all combined to make him dread his homecoming, which so many times in the years since he had been away he had looked forward to some day with hope and exultation. It was all so different from what he thought it would be. He was still only an obscure instructor at one of the universities in the city, his book was not yet published, he was not by any standard which his native town could know--"successful", "a success". And as he thought of it, he realised that, almost more than anything, he feared the sharp, appraising eye, the worldly judgments, of that little town.