You Can't Go Home Again (16 page)

He had inherited two fortunes before his twenty-fifth year and had run through them both. Hilarious stories were told of Tim’s celebrated pleasure tour upon the inheritance of the second fortune. He had chartered a private car, stocked it plentifully with liquor, and selected as his travelling companions the most notorious sots, vagabonds, and tramps the community could furnish. The debauch had lasted eight months. This party of itinerant bacchuses had made a tour of the entire country. They had exploded their empty flasks against the ramparts of the Rocky Mountains, tossed their empty kegs into San Francisco Bay, strewn the plains with their beer bottles. At last the party had achieved a condition of exhausted satiety in the nation’s capital, where Tim, with what was left of his inheritance, had engaged an entire floor at one of the leading hotels. Then, one by one, the exhausted wanderers had drifted back to town, bringing tales of bacchanalian orgies that had not been equalled since the days of the Roman emperors, and leaving Tim finally in solitary possession of the wreckage of empty suites.

From that time on he had slipped rapidly into a state of perpetual sottishness. Even then, however, he had retained the traces of an attractive and engaging personality. Everyone had had a tolerant and unspoken affection for him. Save for the harm he did himself, Tim was an inoffensive and good-natured creature.

His figure on the streets of the town at night had been a familiar one. From sunset on, he might be found almost anywhere. It was easy to tell what progressive state of intoxication he had reached simply by observing his method of locomotion. No one ever saw him stagger. He did not weave drunkenly along the pavement. Rather, when he approached the saturation point, he walked very straight, very rapidly, but with funny little short steps. As he walked he kept his face partly lowered, glancing quickly and comically from side to side, with little possumlike looks. If he approached complete paralysis, he just stood quietly and leaned against something—a lamppost or a door-way or the side of a building or the front of the drugstore. Here he would remain for hours in a state of solemn immobility, broken only by an occasional belch. His face, already grown thin and flabby-jowled, with its flaming beacon of a nose, would at these times be composed in an expression of drunken gravity, and his whole condition would be characterised by a remarkable alertness, perceptiveness, and control. He rarely degenerated into complete collapse. Almost always he could respond instantly and briskly to a word of greeting.

Even the police had had a benevolent regard for him, and they had exercised a friendly guardianship over him. Through long experience and observation, every policeman on the force was thoroughly acquainted with Tim’s symptoms. They could tell at a glance just what degree of intoxication he had reached, and if they thought he had crossed the final border line and that his collapse in door-way or gutter was imminent, they would take charge of him, speaking to him kindly, but with a stern warning:

“Tim, if you’re on the streets again to-night, we’re going to lock you up. Now you go on home and go to bed.”

To this Tim would nod briskly, with instant and amiable agreement: “Yes, sir, yes, sir. Just what I was going to do, Captain Crane, when you spoke to me. Going home right this minute. Yes, sir.”

With these words he would start off briskly across the street, his legs making their little fast, short steps and his eyes darting comically from side to side, until he had vanished round the corner. Within ten or fifteen minutes, however, he might be seen again, easing his way along cautiously in the dark shadow of a building, creeping up to the corner, and peeking round with a sly look on his face to see if any of the watchdogs of the law were in sight.

As time went on and his life lapsed more and more into total vagabondage, one of his wealthy aunts, in the hope that some employment might partially retrieve him, had given him the use of a vacant lot behind some buildings in the business section of the town, a short half-block from Main Street. The motor-car had now come in sufficient numbers to make parking laws important, and Tim was allowed by his aunt to use this lot as parking space for cars and to keep the money thus obtained. In this employment he succeeded far better than anyone expected. He had little to do except stay on the premises, and this was not difficult for him so long as he was plentifully supplied with corn whisky.

During this period of his life some canvassers at a local election, had looked for Tim to enrol him in the interest of their candidate, but they had been unable to find out where he lived. He had not; lived, of course, with any member of his family for years, and investigation failed to disclose that he had a room anywhere. The question then began to go round: “Where does Tim Wagner live? Where does he sleep?” No one could find out. And Tim’s own answers, when pressed for information, were slyly evasive.

One day, however, the answer came to light. The motor-car had come, and come so thoroughly that people were even getting buried by motor-car. The day of the horse-drawn hearse had passed for ever. Accordingly, one of the local undertaking firms had told Tim he could have their old horse-drawn hearse if he would only take it off their premises. Tim had accepted the macabre gift and had parked the hearse in his lot. One day when Tim was absent the canvassers came back again, still persistent in their efforts to learn his address so they could enrol him. They noticed the old hearse, and, seeing that its raven curtains were so closely drawn that the interior was hidden from view, they decided to investigate. Cautiously they opened the doors of the hearse. A cot was inside. There was even a chair. It was completely furnished as a small but adequate bedroom.

So at last his secret had been found out. Henceforth all the town knew where he lived.

That was Tim Wagner as George had known him fifteen years ago. Since then he had been so constantly steeped in alcohol that his progressive disintegration had been marked, and he had lately adopted the fantastic trappings of a clown of royalty. Everyone knew all about him, and yet—the fact was incredible!—Tim Wagner had now become the supreme embodiment of the town’s extravagant folly. For, as gamblers will stake a fortune on some moment’s whimsey of belief, thrusting their money into a stranger’s hand and bidding him to play with it because the colour of his hair is lucky, or as racetrack men will rub the hump upon a cripple’s back to bring them luck, so the people of the town now listened prayerfully to every word Tim Wagner uttered. They sought his opinion in all their speculations, and acted instantly on this suggestions. He had become—in what way and for what reason no one knew—the high priest and prophet of this insanity of waste.

They knew that he was diseased and broken, that his wits were always addled now with alcohol, but they used him as men once used divining rods. They deferred to him as Russian peasants once deferred to the village idiot. They now believed with an absolute and unquestioning faith that some power of intuition in him made all his judgments infallible.

It was this creature who had just alighted at the kerb a little beyond George Webber and Sam Pennock, full of drunken majesty and bleary-eyed foppishness. Sam turned to him with a movement of feverish eagerness, saying to George abruptly:

“Wait a minute! I’ve got to speak to Tim Wagner about something! Wait till I come back!”

George watched the scene with amazement. Tim Wagner, still drawing the gloves off of his fingers with an expression of bored casualness, walked slowly over towards the entrance of McCormack’s drug-store—no longer were his steps short and quick, for he leaned heavily on his cane—while Sam, in an attitude of obsequious entreaty, kept at his elbow, bending his tall form towards him and hoarsely pouring out a torrent of questions:

“...Property in West Libya…Seventy-five thousand dollars…Option expires to-morrow at noon…Joe Ingram has the piece above mine…Won’t sell…Holding for hundred fifty…Mine’s the best location…But Fred Bynum says too far from main road…What do you think, Tim?...Is it worth it?”

During the course of this torrential appeal Tim Wagner did not even turn to look at his petitioner. He gave no evidence whatever that he heard what Sam was saying. Instead, he stopped, thrust his gloves into his pocket, cast, his eyes round slyly in a series of quick glances, and suddenly began to root into himself violently with a clutching hand. Then he straightened up like a man just coming out of a trance, and seemed to become aware for the first time that Sam was waiting.

“What’s that? What did you say, Sam?” he said rapidly. “How much did they offer you for it? Don’t sell, don’t sell!” he said suddenly and with great emphasis. “Now’s the time to buy, not to sell. The trend is upwards. Buy! Buy! Don’t take it. Don’t sell. That’s my advice!”

“I’m not selling, Tim,” Sam cried excitedly. “I’m thinking of buying.”

“Oh—yes, yes, yes!” Tim muttered rapidly. “I see, I see.” He turned now for the first time and fixed his eyes upon his questioner. “Where did you say it was?” he demanded sharply. “Deepwood? Good! Good! Can’t go wrong! Buy! Buy!”

He started to walk away into the drug-store, and the lounging idlers moved aside deferentially to let him pass. Sam rushed after him frantically and caught him by the arm, shouting:

“No, no, Tim! It’s not Deepwood! It’s the other way…I’ve been telling you…It’s West Libya!”

“What’s that?” Tim cried sharply. “West Libya? Why didn’t you say so? That’s different. Buy! Buy! Can’t go wrong! Whole town’s moving in that direction. Values double out there in six months. How much do they want?”

“Seventy-five thousand,” Sam panted. “Option expires tomorrow…Five yeas to pay it up.”

“Buy! Buy!” Tim barked, and walked off into the drug-store.

Sam strode back towards George, his eyes blazing with excitement.

“Did you hear him? Did you hear what he said?” he demanded hoarsely. “You heard him, didn’t you?...Best damned judge of real estate that ever lived…Never known to make a mistake
Buy! Will double in value in six months!’...You were standing right here”—he said hoarsely and accusingly, glaring at George—“you heard what he said, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I heard him.”

Sam glanced wildly about him, passed his hand nervously through his hair several times, and then said, sighing heavily and shaking his head in wonder:

“Seventy-five thousand dollars’ profit in one deal!...Never heard anything like it in my…life! Lord, Lord!” he cried. “What are we coming to?”

Somehow the news had got round that George had written a book and that it would soon be published. The editor of the local paper heard of it and sent a reporter to interview him, and printed a story about it.

“So you’ve written a book?” said the reporter. “What kind of a book is it? What’s it about?”

“Why—I—I hardly know how to tell you,” George stammered. “It—it’s a novel----”

“A Southern novel? Anything to do with this part of the country?”

“Well—yes—that is—it’s about the South, all right—about an Old Catawba family—but----”

LOCAL BOY WRITES ROMANCE OF THE OLD SOUTH

George Webber, son of the late John Webber and nephew of Mark Joyner, local hardware merchant, has written a novel with a Libya Hill background which the New York house of James Rodney & Co. will publish this autumn.

When interviewed last night, the young author stated that his book was a romance of the Old South, centring about the history of a distinguished antebellum family of this region. The people of Libya Hill and environs will await the publication of the book with special interest, not only because many of them will remember the author, who was born and brought up here, but also because that stirring period of Old Catawba’s past has never before been accorded its rightful place of honour in the annals of Southern literature.

“We understand you have travelled a great deal since you left home. Been to Europe several times?”

“Yes, I have.”

“In your opinion, how does this section of the country compare with other places you have seen?”

“Why—why—er—why
good!
...I mean,
fine!
That is----”

LOCAL PARADISE COMPARES FAVOURABLY

In answer to the reporter’s question as to how this part of the country compared to other places he had seen, the former Libya man declared:

“There is no place I have ever visited—and my travels have taken me to England, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, to say nothing of the south of France, the Italian Riviera, and the Swiss Alps—which can compare in beauty with the setting of my native town.

“We have here,” he said enthusiastically, “a veritable Paradise of Nature. Air, climate, scenery, water, natural beauty, all conspire to make this section the most ideal place in the whole world to live.”

“Did you ever think of coming back here to live?”

“Well—yes—I
have
thought of it—but—you see----”

WILL SETTLE AND BUILD HERE

When questioned as to his future plans, the author said:

“For years, my dearest hope and chief ambition has been that one day I should be able to come back here to live. One who has ever known the magic of these hills cannot forget them. I hope, therefore, that the time is not far distant when I may return for good.