“We shouldn’t have done that,” Gant muttered.
“Pshaw!” said Eliza.
“No one will ever notice her.”
He saw them into the train, disposed comfortably by the solicitous Pullman porter.
“Keep your eye on them, George,” he said, and gave the man a coin.
Eliza eyed it jealously.
He kissed them all roughly with his mustache, but he patted his little girl’s bony shoulders with his great hand, and hugged her to him.
Something stabbed sharply in Eliza.
They had an awkward moment.
The strangeness, the absurdity of the whole project, and the monstrous fumbling of all life, held them speechless.
“Well,” he began, “I reckon you know what you’re doing.”
“Well, I tell you,” she said, pursing her lips, and looking out the window, “you don’t know what may come out of this.”
He was vaguely appeased.
The train jerked, and moved off slowly.
He kissed her clumsily.
“Let me know as soon as you get there,” he said, and he strode swiftly down the aisle.
“Good-by, good-by,” cried Eliza, waving Eugene’s small hand at the long figure on the platform.
“Children,” she said, “wave good-by to your papa.”
They all crowded to the window.
Eliza wept.
Eugene watched the sun wane and redden on a rocky river, and on the painted rocks of Tennessee gorges: the enchanted river wound into his child’s mind forever.
Years later, it was to be remembered in dreams tenanted with elvish and mysterious beauty.
Stilled in great wonder, he went to sleep to the rhythmical pounding of the heavy wheels.
They lived in a white house on the corner.
There was a small plot of lawn in front, and a narrow strip on the side next to the pavement.
He realized vaguely that it was far from the great central web and roar of the city — he thought he heard some one say four or five miles.
Where was the river?
Two little boys, twins, with straight very blond heads, and thin, mean faces, raced up and down the sidewalk before the house incessantly on tricycles.
They wore white sailor-suits, with blue collars, and he hated them very much.
He felt vaguely that their father was a bad man who had fallen down an elevator shaft, breaking his legs.
The house had a back yard, completely enclosed by a red board fence.
At the end was a red barn.
Years later, Steve, returning home, said:
“That section’s all built up out there now.”
Where?
One day in the hot barren back yard, two cots and mattresses had been set up for airing.
He lay upon one luxuriously, breathing the hot mattress, and drawing his small legs up lazily.
Luke lay upon the other.
They were eating peaches.
A fly grew sticky on Eugene’s peach.
He swallowed it.
Luke howled with laughter.
“Swallowed a fly!
Swallowed a fly!”
He grew violently sick, vomited, and was unable to eat for some time.
He wondered why he had swallowed the fly when he had seen it all the time.
The summer came down blazing hot.
Gant arrived for a few days, bringing Daisy with him.
One night they drank beer at the Delmar Gardens.
In the hot air, at a little table, he gazed thirstily at the beaded foaming stein: he would thrust his face, he thought, in that chill foam and drink deep of happiness.