The Web and The Root (16 page)

For Mark Joyner’s wife, Aunt Mag, the boy George had little love.

She was of a family of mountain peasants, and she had done everything she could to advance her position in life by a liberal use of Mark’s purse.

“She needn’t give herself airs,” said Aunt Maw. “When Mark first saw her, she was hoein’ corn in a field.”

Childless at forty-five, Mag was a tall, rather gaunt, white-faced woman, with cold eyes, a thin nose, and a bitter, sneering mouth. She had been handsome, but for twenty years she had been under the spell of a neurosis which had held her in the unshakable conviction that she was suffering from consumption, cancer, heart disease, and pernicious anæmia. She was under constant medical attention. She spent half her waking hours extended in white terror on her bed, in a room chemical with shelves and tables full of bottles, and sealed against a draft of air.

She was, as a matter of fact, a strong, healthy, and well-nourished woman.

George sometimes went along with Aunt Maw when she crossed the intervening strip of lawn to visit Mag in her new and ugly house of bright red brick. They would find her in her sealed room in a sickening enervation of red-hot stove heat.

“Come here!” Aunt Mag would say in her harsh, sneering voice, drawing the boy’s unwilling figure beside her bed. “Lord a’ mercy!” she
would add, staring up into his face with her bitter laugh. “He smells like a Webber! Do your feet stink, boy?”

These pleasantries, delivered to the accompaniment of sneering laughter, and a bending down of her thin, pious mouth as she pretended to sniff the air with disgust, did not increase George’s love for his aunt.

“You don’t know how lucky you are, boy!” she would scream at him. “You ought to get down on your knees every night and thank the Lord for having a good Christian home like this! Where would you be if it wasn’t for me? I made your Uncle Mark take you in! If it wasn’t for me, you’d have been sent to an orphan asylum—that’s where you’d be!”

Under this goading, the boy would mumble his gratitude, but in his heart he often wished he
had
been sent to an orphanage.

M
AG WAS A
Baptist, and very active in her church. She donated liberally; she fattened the preacher at her Sunday table; above all, she contributed large sums for the maintenance of the Baptist orphanage, and kept in her service at all times two or three children whom she had taken under her generous wing. This charity got the thick coatings of flattery which assure a Baptist of success on earth and favor in heaven. The minister, speaking to his Sunday hundreds, would say:

“…And now I know we will all be glad to hear that the heart of another orphan child has been made happy through the generosity of Sister Joyner, who, in the great goodness of her heart, is giving a comfortable home to Betsy Belcher, a little girl who lost both her parents before she was eight years old. This makes the sixth orphan that the good woman has taken into her loving care. I know, when we see her giving to the Lord so freely, that there are others here who will be led to give a little in the furtherance of the great work which the good Brothers and Sisters at the orphanage are doing.”

And as Mag, bridling and ludicrously humble, advanced to the pulpit after the preacher’s harangue, he would bend with greased unction over her hand, saying:

“And how is the good woman today?”

Mag took in these wretched children and made them drudges of all trades about the house. One of them was a boy of fourteen whose name was Willie, a thick-headed, smiling, perpetually bewildered idiot. Willie never played with the boys in the neighborhood because he was always kept busy doing chores, and George rarely saw him except on his visits of duty to Aunt Mag, when the orphan boy would be summoned into her room on a fire-building errand.

“Did you ever see such an idiot?” Mag would say, with her sneering laugh. “Lord a’ mercy!”

And the boy would smile back at her, doubtfully, idiotically, fearfully, not knowing why.

One time Willie was left with Aunt Maw when Mark and Mag went to Florida. He worked like a dog. Aunt Maw stuffed him with food and gave him a little room in which to sleep. She did not abuse him. She and George laughed constantly at him, and he was absurdly pleased and grateful to know that he amused them, smiling his wide, idiot grin.

His hair was a tangled, uncut jungle which fell in matted lengths almost to his shoulder. Nebraska Crane told him solemnly, one day, that he was an experienced barber, and Willie submitted joyfully to the operation. Nebraska capped his large head with an inverted chamber pot, and laughed quietly from time to time as he sheared off all the hair that fell below the edges of the pot. And Willie, under the pot, continued to smile at them in friendly, puzzled idiocy while Nebraska and George caved slowly inward with laughter.

M
AG HAD TWO
nephews who lived in the big house with her and Mark. They were the sons of her brother who had died, and when the mother of the boys died not long after their father, Mag had taken them in. Since they were her own blood, she had brought them up with as much misguided indulgence as though they had been her sons, and had lavished upon them all the affection of which her narrow and
thwarted nature was capable. Mark’s money was poured out for their benefit with a liberal hand, Mag having made it a cardinal point, in her system of educating them for their high position in life as her nearest kin, to deny them nothing.

The older, Earl, was a heavy, florid, coarsely handsome young man with a loud, vacant, infectious laugh. He was well liked in the town. He had devoted all his time to the study of golf as a fine art, and was one of the best players in Libya Hill. It pleased Mag to know that he was a member of the Country Club. Her conception of gentility was a life of complete idleness spent in the company of “the best people.”

The other nephew, the little golden apple of Mag’s delight, was named Tad. He was now a young man of seventeen or eighteen, with a shiny red, porky face and an annoying, satisfied laugh. Tad had avoided expertly all of the inconvenient toil of life. He had all his aunt’s skill in calling on physical collapse to aid him, and Mag was convinced that a weak heart ran in her family and that the boy had inherited it.

Tad, too delicate for the rough uses of a school, received his instruction at home, peripatetically, in the Greek manner, between three and four o’clock in the afternoon, from a withered hack who ran a small school for boys, and who, for a substantial sum, winked considerately and assured Mag that her nephew had already received the equivalent of a university education.

A good part of his time Tad spent in his “laboratory,” a little gabled room in the attic to which he brought the subjects of his experiments—small, panting birds, vibrating cats, stray curs—noting with minute curiosity their sensory responses when he drove pins into their eyes, cut off portions of their tails, or seared them with a heated poker.

“That boy’s a born naturalist,” said Mag.

Mark Joyner was frugal for himself, but open-handed with Mag. He had toast and two boiled eggs for breakfast, which he cooked on top of a little wood stove in his room, estimating among his friends the cost of kindling, eggs, and bread at twelve cents. Later he used the hot water for shaving.

“By God!” said the townsmen, “that’s the reason he’s got it!”

He sought for his clothing among the Jews; he smoked rank, weedy “threefers” he cobbled his own shoes; he exulted equally in his parsimony to himself and his liberality to his household. From the first years of his marriage he had given Mag a generous allowance, which had increased as his business prospered, and she had turned over a considerable part of it to her two nephews. They were her own blood, and whatever she had was theirs.

Most of the time Mag held her husband in iron subjection, but there was a hidden volcano of anger in him that increased from year to year of his living with her, and when it was roused, all her weapons of harsh laughter, incessant nagging, and chronic invalidism were impotent. He would grow silent, doing his utmost to control himself, and in the effort contorting his lips in a terrible grimace; but finally his emotion would become too much for him, and he would storm out of the house, away from Mag and the sound of her voice, and, turning his gaunt face towards the western hills, he would tramp through the woods for hours until his spirit grew calm again.

When George Webber was a child, Locust Street, the street on which he lived with his Joyner relatives, seemed fixed for him into the substance of immemorial antiquity. It had a beginning and a history, he had no doubt, but a history that began so long ago that countless men had come and lived and died and been forgotten since the street began, and no man living could remember when that was. Moreover, it seemed to him that every house and tree and garden had been framed to the pattern of an immutable design: they were there because they had to be there, they were built that way because that was the only way in which they could be built.

This street held for him a universe of joy and magic which seemed abundant for a thousand lives. Its dimensions were noble in their space and limitless surprise. Its world of houses, yards, and orchards and its hundred people seemed to him to have the incomparable grandeur of the first place on earth, the impregnable authority of the center of the universe.

In later years, George plainly saw that the world in which he lived had been a little place. All of the dimensions of the street had dwindled horribly. The houses that had seemed so imposing in their opulence and grandeur, the lawns that were so spacious, the backyards and the vistaed orchards that went on in limitless progressions of delight and new discovery that never had an end—all this had shrunken pitifully, incredibly, and now looked close, and mean, and cramped. Yet even
then, years later, the street and all its million memories of a buried life awoke for him with the blazing and intolerable vividness of a dream. It was a world which he had known and lived with every atom of his blood and brain and spirit, and every one of its thousand images was rooted into the structure of his life forever, as much a part of him as his inmost thoughts.

A
T FIRST IT
was just the feel of the grass and the earth and the ground under your naked feet in May when you were going barefoot for the first time and walking gingerly. It was the cool feel of the sand up through your toes, and the feel of the soft tar in the streets and walking on a wall of concrete blocks, and the feel of cool, damp earth in shaded places. It was the feel of standing on the low edge of a roof or in a barn loft opening or on the second story of a house that was being built and daring another boy to jump; and looking over, waiting, knowing you must jump; and looking down, and waiting, daring, taunting, with a thudding heart, until you jumped.

And then it was the good feel of throwing a small, round, heavy stone through the window of a vacant house when the red and ancient light of evening was blazing on its windows; and it was like feeling a baseball in your hands for the first time in the Spring, and its round and solid weight at the end of your arm and the way it shot away like a bullet the first time when you threw it with a feeling of terrific power and speed and it smacked into the odorous, well-oiled pocket of the catcher’s mitt. And then it was like prowling round in dark, cool cellars, thinking you would come upon a buried treasure any moment, and finding rows of cobwebbed bottles and the rusty frame of an old bicycle.

Sometimes it was like waking up on Saturday with the grand feeling of Saturday morning leaping in your heart, and seeing the apple blossoms drifting to the earth, and smelling sausage and ham and coffee, and knowing there would be no school today, no dreadful, morning, schoolhouse bell today, no thudding heart, and pounding legs,
and shuddering nerves and bolted and uneasy food, and sour, distressful coffee in your guts, because there would be no school today and it was golden, shining, and triumphant Saturday.

And then it was like Saturday night, and joy and menace in the air, and everyone waiting to get out on the streets and go “uptown,” and taking a hot bath, and putting on clean clothes and eating supper, and going uptown on the nighttime streets of Saturday where joy and menace filled the air about you, and where glory breathed upon you, and yet never came, and getting far down towards the front and seeing Broncho Billy shoot the bad men dead three times until the last show of the night was over, and a cracked slide was shone on the screen which said “Good Night.”

Then it was like Sunday morning, waking, hearing the bus outside, smelling the coffee, brains and eggs, and buckwheat cakes, feeling peaceful, sweetly happy, not exultant as on Saturday, a slumberous, drowsy, and more mournful joy, the smell of the Sunday newspapers, and the Sunday morning light outside, bright, golden, yet religious light, and church bells, people putting on good clothes to go to church, and the closed and decent streets of Sunday morning, and going by the cool side where the tobacco store was, and the Sunday morning sports inside who didn’t have to go to church, and the strong, clean, pungent smell of good tobacco, and the good smell and feel of the church, which was not so much like God as like a good and decent substance in the world—the children singing, “Shall we gather at the River the Bew-tee-ful the Bew-tee-ful R-hiv-er!”—and the drone of voices from the class rooms later on, and the dark walnut, stained-glass light in the church, and decent, never-gaudy people with good dinners waiting for them when they got home, and the remote yet passionate austerity of the preacher’s voice, the lean, horselike nobility of his face as he craned above his collar saying “heinous”—and all remote, austere, subdued, and decent as if God were there in walnut light and a choker collar: and then the twenty-minute prayer, the organ pealing a rich benison, and people talking, laughing, streaming out from the dutiful, weekly,
walnut disinfection of their souls into bright morning-gold of Sunday light again, and standing then in friendly and yet laughing groups upon the lawn outside, and steaming off towards home again, a steady liquid Sunday shuffle of good leather on the quiet streets—and all of it was good and godly, yet not like God, but like an ordered destiny, like Sunday morning peace and decency and good dinners, money in the bank, and strong security.

And then it was the huge winds in great trees at night—the remote, demented winds—the sharp, clean raining of the acorns to the earth, and a demon’s whisper of evil and unbodied jubilation in your heart, speaking of triumph, flight, and darkness, new lands, morning, and a shining city.

And then it was like waking up and knowing somehow snow was there before you looked, feeling the numb, white, brooding prescience of soft-silent, all-engulfing snow around you and then hearing it, soft, almost noiseless, fluff and fall to earth, and the scraping of a shovel on the sidewalk before the house.

And then it was like stern and iron Winter, and days and nights that ate intolerably the slow grey ash of time away, and April that would never come, and waiting, waiting, waiting dreamily at night for something magical that never happened, and bare boughs that creaked and swayed in darkness, and the frozen shapes of limbs that swung stiff shadows on the street below a light, and your aunt’s voice filled with the fathomless sea-depths of Joyner time and horror, and of a race that lived forever while you drowned.

And then it was like the few days that you liked school, when you began and ended in September and in June. It was like going back to school again in September and getting some joy and hope out of the book-lists that the teacher gave you the first day, and then the feel and look and smell of the new geography, the reader and the composition books, the history, and the smells of pencils, wooden rules, and paper in the bookstore, and the solid, wealthy feel of the books and bookstrap, and taking the books home and devouring them—the new,
richly illustrated geography and history and reading books—devouring them with an insatiate joy and hunger until there was nothing new left in them, and getting up in the morning and hearing the morning schoolhouse bell, and hoping it would not be so bad this year after all.

And it was like waiting in May for school to end, and liking it, and feeling a little sad because it would soon be over, and like the last day when you felt quite sorrowful and yet full of an exultant joy, and watched the high school graduate, and saw the plaster casts of Minerva and Diana, the busts of Socrates, Demosthenes, and Caesar, and smelled the chalk, the ink, the schoolroom smells, with ecstasy, and were sorry you were leaving them.

And you felt tears come to your own eyes as the class sang its graduation song with words to the tune of “Old Heidelberg,” and saw the girls weeping hysterically, kissing each other and falling on the neck of Mr. Hamby, the Principal, swearing they would never forget him, no, never, as long as they lived, and these had been the happiest days of their lives, and they just couldn’t bear it—boo-hoo-hoo!—and then listened to the oration of the Honorable Zebulon N. Meekins, the local Congressman, telling them the world had never seen a time when it needed leaders as it does at present and go—go—go my young friends and be a Leader in the Great World that is waiting for you and God Bless You All—and your eyes were wet, your throat was choked with joy and pain intolerable as Zebulon N. Meekins spoke these glorious words, for as he spoke them the soft, bloom-laden wind of June howled gusty for a moment at the eaves, you saw the young green of the trees outside and smelled a smell of tar and green and fields thick with the white and yellow of daisies bending in the wind, and heard far-faint thunder on the rails, and saw the Great World then, the far-shining, golden, and enchanted city, and heard the distant, murmurous drone of all its million-footed life, and saw its fabulous towers soaring upward from an opalescent mist, and knew that some day you would walk its streets a conqueror and be a Leader among the most beautiful and fortunate people in the world: and you thought the golden tongue of Zebulon Nathaniel Meekins had done it
all for you, and gave no credit to the troubling light that came and went outside, from gold to grey and back to gold again, and none to the young green of June and the thick-starred magic of the daisy fields, or to the thrilling schoolhouse smells of chalk and ink and varnished desks, or to the thrilling mystery, joy, and sadness, the numb, delicious feel of glory in your guts—no you gave no credit to these things at all, but thought Zeb Meekins’ golden tongue had done it all to you.

And you wondered what the schoolrooms were like in Summer when no one was there, and wished that you could be there alone with your pretty, red-haired, and voluptuous-looking teacher, or with a girl in your class who sat across the aisle from you, and whose name was Edith Pickleseimer, and who had fat curls, blue eyes of sweet tranquillity, and a tender, innocent smile, and who wore short little skirts, clean blue drawers, and you could sometimes see the white and tender plumpness of her leg where the straps and garter buckles that held up her stockings pressed into it, and you thought of being here with her alone, and yet all in a pure way too.

And sometimes it was like coming home from school in October, and smelling burning leaves upon the air, and wading in the oak leaves in the gutter, and seeing men in shirt-sleeves with arm bands of a ruffled blue upon the sleeves raking the leaves together in their yards, and feeling, smelling, hearing ripeness, harvest, in the air, and sometimes frost at night, silence, frost-white moonlight through the windows, the distant barking of a dog, and a great train pounding at the rails, a great train going in the night, the tolling bell, the lonely and departing whistle-wail.

T
HESE LIGHTS AND
shapes and tones of things swarmed in the boy’s mind like a magic web of shifting, iridescent colors. For the place where he lived was not just a street to him—not just a strip of pavement and a design of weathered, shabby houses: it was the living integument of his life, the frame and stage for the whole world of childhood and enchantment.

Here on the corner of Locust Street, at the foot of the hill below his uncle’s house, was the wall of concrete blocks on which Monk sat at night a thousand times with the other boys in the neighborhood, conspiring together in lowered voices, weaving about their lives a huge conspiracy of night and mystery and adventure, prowling away into the dark to find it, whispering and snickering together in the dark, now prowling softly in the shadows, halting sharply, whispering, “Wait a minute!”—now in full, sudden, startled flight and terror with a rush of feet, going away from—nothing. Now talking, conspiring mysteriously again upon the wall of concrete blocks, and prowling off desperately into the dark of streets, yards, and alleys, filled exultantly with the huge and evil presence of the dark, and hoping, with a kind of desperate terror and resolve, for something wicked, wild, and evil in the night, as jubilant and dark as the demonic joy that rose wildly and intolerable in their hearts.

This also was the corner where he saw two boys killed one day. It was a day in Spring, in afternoon, and heavy, grey, and wet to feel, all of the air was cool, and damp, full of the smell of earth and heavy green. He was on his way uptown, and Aunt Maw was cleaning up in the dining room and looking after him as he went down Locust Street, past the Shepperton house and past the house across the street where Nebraska Crane lived. He had a good feeling because he was going to buy chocolate and maple syrup for candy making, and because the air was heavy, grey, and green, and he felt some intolerable joy was in the air.

Then he turned the corner into Baird Street, and Albert and Johnny Andrews were coming towards him, coasting in their wagon, Albert steering; and Johnny raised his hand and yelled at him as he went by, and Albert yelled but did not raise his hand. And then Monk turned to watch them as they whizzed around the corner and saw the high-wheeled Oldsmobile that young Hank Bass drove run over them. And he remembered that the car belonged to Mr. Pendergraft, the fine-looking lumber man, who was rich and lived out on Montgomery
Avenue in the swell part of town, and had two sons named Hip and Hop who went to Sunday School with Monk and grinned at people and were tongue-tied and had harelips. He saw the car hit the boys, smash their wagon into splinters, and drag Albert on his face for fifty yards. And Albert’s wagon had been painted bright yellow, and on the sides had been printed the word “Leader.”