Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe Read Free

once more, there were purple flashes of
the old rhetoric, the ghost of the old eagerness.
    One day in April, as with fresh awakened senses, he
stood before his shop, watching the flurry of life in the square,
Oliver heard behind him the voice of a man who was passing.  And
that voice, flat, drawling, complacent, touched with sudden light a
picture that had lain dead in him for twenty years.
    "Hit's a comin'!  Accordin' to my figgers
hit's due June 11, 1886."
    Oliver turned and saw retreating the burly persuasive
figure of the prophet he had last seen vanishing down the dusty road
that led to Gettysburg and Armageddon.
    "Who is that?" he asked a man.
    The man looked and grinned.
    "That's Bacchus Pentland," he said. 
"He's quite a character.There are a lot of his folks around
here."
    Oliver wet his great thumb briefly.  Then, with
a grin, he said:
    "Has Armageddon come yet?"
    "He's expecting it any day now," said the
man.
 
 
    Then Oliver met Eliza.  He lay one afternoon in
Spring upon the smooth leather sofa of his little office, listening
to the bright piping noises in the Square.  A restoring peace
brooded over his great extended body.  He thought of the loamy
black earth with its sudden young light of flowers, of the beaded
chill of beer, and of the plumtree's dropping blossoms.  Then he
heard the brisk heel-taps of a woman coming down among the marbles,
and he got hastily to his feet.  He was drawing on his well
brushed coat of heavy black just as she entered.
    "I tell you what," said Eliza, pursing her
lips in reproachful banter, "I wish I was a man and had nothing
to do but lie around all day on a good easy sofa."
    "Good afternoon, madam," said Oliver with a
flourishing bow. "Yes," he said, as a faint sly grin bent
the corners of his thin mouth, "I reckon you've caught me taking
my constitutional.  As a  matter of fact I very rarely lie
down in the daytime, but I've been in bad health for the last year
now, and I'm not able to do the work I used to."
    He was silent a moment; his face drooped in an
expression of hangdog dejection.  "Ah, Lord!  I don't
know what's to become of me!"
    "Pshaw!" said Eliza briskly and
contemptuously.  "There's nothing wrong with you in my
opinion.  You're a big strapping fellow, in the prime of life. 
Half of it's only imagination.  Most of the time we think we're
sick it's all in the mind.  I remember three years ago I was
teaching school in Hominy Township when I was taken down with
pneumonia.  Nobody ever expected to see me come out of it alive
but I got through it somehow; I well remember one day I was sitting
down--as the fellow says, I reckon I was convalescin'; the reason I
remember is Old Doctor Fletcher had just been and when he went out I
saw him shake his head at my cousin Sally.  'Why Eliza, what on
earth,' she said, just as soon as he had gone, 'he tells me you're
spitting up blood every time you cough; you've got consumption as
sure as you live.'  'Pshaw,' I said.  I remember I laughed
just as big as you please, determined to make a big joke of it all; I
just thought to myself, I'm not going to give into it, I'll fool them
all yet; 'I don't believe a word of it' (I said)," she nodded
her head smartly at him, and pursed her lips, "'and besides,
Sally' (I said) 'we've all got to go some time, and there's no use
worrying about what's going to happen.  It may come tomorrow, or
it may come later, but it's bound to come to all in the end'."
    "Ah Lord!" said Oliver, shaking his head
sadly.  "You bit the nail on the head that time.  A
truer word was never spoken."
    Merciful God! he thought, with an anguished inner
grin.  How long is this to keep up?  But she's a pippin as
sure as you're born.  He looked appreciatively at her trim erect
figure, noting her milky white skin, her black-brown eyes, with their
quaint child's stare, and her jet black hair drawn back tightly from
her high white forehead.  She had a curious trick of pursing her
lips reflectively