Raintree County (112 page)

Sphinx Recumbent

THE
P
ERFESSOR SAID
. Yes, I still have it, packed away in a box somewhere. I've moved around a good deal since then. As I remember it, it was a hideous daub. ‘Sphinx Recumbent.' What made you think of it?

—O, nothing in particular, Mr. Shawnessy said, shoving the telegram from Cassius Carney, received the day before, back into his coatpocket. Just memories of my City days. Fact is, I dreamed about the darn thing last night.

The Senator's train was late, and as the crowd slowly dispersed, the Senator walked over to the bench by the station door and sat down fanning his face with his hat. Mr. Shawnessy and the Perfessor flanked him. Inside the Station the telegraph key clickclicked its uncertain but incessant rhythm.

—Phew! the Senator said. Wish my train would come. What time does Cash come in?

—Around five, Mr. Shawnessy said. On the Eastbound from Indianapolis.

—Maybe I'll get to see him after all, the Senator said. Jesus, John, don't tell me you mean to stay in this hick town all your life! How do you do it?

—How do
you
do it, Garwood? Mr. Shawnessy said. How do you go on playing the part of the Great Commoner?

—Up there on the rostrum, the Senator said, it's the noble part of me that speaks. You fellows appeal to my baseness. To tell you the truth, I really appreciate Raintree County when I'm a thousand miles away from it. But if I had to live here for a month, I'd go nuts. It's so—so goddam wholesome and peaceful. By the way, what is your candid opinion of the program today? Did it go over?

—You're safe, the Perfessor said. There's one born every minute, and each one has a vote.

—What made you think you needed to pull this big charade, Garwood? Mr. Shawnessy said.

—I have to take cognizance of this new Populist movement, the Senator said. To be perfectly frank, I'm afraid of it. After winning every political contest I've been entered in for thirty years, I don't intend to get stampeded out of office by this gang of amateur politicians and professional horse-thieves who call themselves the People's Party.

—Of which, Mr. Shawnessy said, I'm a member. The People's Party is made up of the folks who are tired of a government of cynical understandings between politicians and businessmen. As for you, Garwood, you never belonged to the People's Party—I mean the eternal and usually unorganized People's Party. You always belonged to just one party, the Party of Yourself, the Party of Garwood B. Jones, and you never had but one platform—the advancement of Garwood B. Jones to the Highest Office Within the Gift of the American People.

—Not so loud, John, the Senator said, oozing laughter. People will overhear you.

He leaned back in his chair, mellow and imperturb.

—Yes, he said, I've always sought the advancement of Garwood B. Jones. He's a magnificent guy, and I like him. But I've always furthered this wonderful bastard's interests in strict observance of the American Way—by giving people what they wanted.

—By
appearing
to give them what they wanted, Mr. Shawnessy said. The people want a chance to own their own land, to have economic security, to see government perform its function of protecting the interests of the many instead of the interests of the few. You'll promise the same things that the People's Party are promising, to keep your party and yourself in power, and once elected, you'll go on doing what you've done before because it's the easiest way and because it's always been successful. You'll continue to obey the voice of the Big Interests, while wooing the vote of the Little Interests.

—My dear fellow, the Senator said, using his big voice like a bludgeon, you do me a great injustice. You speak of the so-called Big Interests as if they were gangs of criminals. Who built this vast country? The Big Interests—that's who. These men are also feathering their own nests—but they've discovered that the best way to
feather your own nest is to advance the interest of people generally. The honest capitalist like the honest politician is the servant of the people. He's a man of superior imagination and daring whose ability to do his country good has earned him the just reward of continued power and wealth, by which he can continue to do good. The people know that their best interests lie in the direction of a constitutional government which encourages the Free Exercise of Individual Rights and the Protection of Home Industries.

—I suppose you perceive, John, the Perfessor said, that we haven't after all emerged very far from the Great Swamp. What is life in the fairest republic the world has ever seen? What did the martyrs of the Great War die for? Liberty? Justice? Union? Emancipation? The Flag? Hell, no. They died so that a lot of slick bastards could exploit the immense natural and human resources of this nation and become fabulously rich while the vast majority of the people grind their guts out to get a living. They died so that several million poor serfs from the stinking slums and ghettos of Europe could come five thousand miles to wedge themselves into the stinking ghettos and slums of America. Only in America is Survival of the Fittest, the principle of brute struggle for life, erected into a principle of government. In America anyone who can crawl to the top of the pile through daring, guile, and sheer ruthlessness can stay up there until somebody pulls him down.

—Professor, the Senator said, you read too much. Go out sometime, jerk off your specs, and take a look at this nation. This nation is big enough for everyone in it.

The Senator was standing now, gesturing forcibly and bringing within the range of his voice a number of citizens who still lingered in the Station and who now began to close in toward the center of sound.

—This nation is big enough and rich enough for everyone to pursue and realize a worthwhile goal. What is wrong with the principle of self-interest anyway? Rational self-interest, controlled by law, is the basis of a free society. Look at the men who have risen to the top of the pile—the presidents, the statesmen, the financiers. Where did they come from? Out of log cabins and back alleys. Everyone has the same chance, under the aegis of the Constitution. What is America, gentlemen? I will tell you. America is the only nation in
the world where mineboys become millionaires, and paperboys become presidents. It is the place where——Pardon me, folks, I'm not making a speech. We are just engaging in that grand old American custom of political disputation. After all, it's an Election Year.

—You've got to hand it to Garwood, the Perfessor sighed. He shovels that stuff with a golden pitchfork.

The Senator sat down again.

—By the way, John, about that
Atlas
—I'm beginning to think the whole thing was a fake. Still, there might be something hidden in it somewhere. Suppose you keep it and sift it fine. If you find something worthwhile, let me know. And another thing, John, I'd esteem it a great personal favor if you'd look over this manuscript for a few days and correct any errors of fact relating to the early history of the County, which you know better than anyone—or make any other suggestions that occur to you. Some of it'll interest you, I'm sure. One of the best things is the story of your homecoming from the War. I quote in full the tender lyric I composed on the occasion of your demise. All handled, of course, with appropriate irony.

Mr. Shawnessy took the proffered manuscript of
Memories of the Republic in War and Peace.

Leaves of my life—but by another's hand.

—To be perfectly frank, John, the Senator went on, I'll never forgive you for walking in on me that day in my office in Indianapolis. At least you didn't have to come in reciting the goddam poem.

Mr. Shawnessy raised a hand in benediction and intoned:

—Sleep in thy hero grave, beloved boy!

Sleep well, thou pure defender of the right.

Far from the battle's din and rude annoy,

Our tears shall keep your memory ever bright.

The Senator laughed and laughed until the tears came to his eyes. He blew his nose and swatted the Perfessor on the back with his free hand. He wiped his eyes and went on wheezing with laughter. Mr. Shawnessy had never seen the Senator so amused before.

—I'll never forget the expression on your face, Garwood. It's the only time in your life I've seen you speechless for twenty seconds.

—Just what did I do? I forget now.

—You turned completely white, cleared your throat, got up, walked over, put a hand on my arm to see if I was real, sat down again, studied a moment, and said, You spoiled a good poem, sprout.

The Senator was still laughing.

—That was one hell of a homecoming you had, he said. I wrote it up at some length in my book there. Hope you don't mind. I guess I got the important facts in.

I doubt it, Mr. Shawnessy thought.

—Ah, gentlemen, the Senator said. What things we have seen and done in fifty years! What is America? Well, I'll tell you, gentlemen——Thunder! there comes my train.

A rhythmical pulse was beating on the rails.

What is America? What is America? What is America?

America is a memory of a boy who was dead and then came home anyway, hunting for an old court house and a home place in the County. America is the memory of millions of young men who came home and never came home and never could come home. America is the land where no one who goes away for a year can come back home again. America is the land where the telegraph keys are clicking all the time and the trains are changing in the stations. America is the image of human change where the change is changed by experts.

Come back, come back to Raintree County. O, wanderer far from home, come back after the Patriotic Program, when the leaves of it are scattered on the grass, and seek again for beauty, love, and wisdom. America is a dream that I was dreaming, an innocent dream among the moneychangers. For I got lost in stations where the trains were changing. I got lost in cities of a gilded age. O, wanderer far from home, come back, come back and live a memory of your illusioned, strong young manhood, a memory of

for the tired hero who came back to Raintree County one day in the spring of 1865 like Lazarus from the dead. When Johnny came marching home at the War's end and when the reunions and discoveries of that extraordinary homecoming were over, he found that in a sense the report of his death had not been unduly exaggerated. Johnny Shawnessy, that innocent and happy youth who had somehow contrived to keep in touch with the elder Raintree County of before the War, was really dead (though it took his successor a little while to become aware of the fact), and the Raintree County to which he had fondly dreamed of returning was also dead. Out of the shocks and changes of the War and the equally great shocks and changes of the homecoming, there emerged a new hero of Raintree County and a new County. The old (that is to say, the young) Johnny was really gone, interred in the triteness of Garwood Jones's poem. In his stead was John Shawnessy, a sober young man of twenty-six, who had now a new life to live, a new love to find, a new poem of himself and the Republic to create.

Also the old Republic was gone. Johnny Shawnessy had unwittingly put the torch to it along with Atlanta and Columbia. The new Republic was something he hadn't foreseen.

He hadn't foreseen the sooty monster that stood alone after the smoke of battle had cleared, the Vanquisher alike of vanquishers and vanquished. Before the War this monster had been an awkward babe. But during the War he had put on muscle. His name was Industrialism.

Johnny Shawnessy hadn't foreseen that where there had been one factory before the War there would be a hundred factories following. He hadn't foreseen that the railroads would grow with magic speed until the huge vine enmeshed the Republic in iron tendrils. He hadn't foreseen that hundreds of thousands of Americans would
leave the farms and go to the great cities. He hadn't foreseen the great cities themselves (for who could have foreseen these huge, glistening mushrooms that appeared one morning on the surface of the Great Swamp!). He hadn't foreseen how tides of aspiration.setting ever east to west would bring millions of immigrants to America and how the tidal glut of these innumerable faces would fill up whole cities and run deep into the prairie leaving pools of alien speech and alien ways around and far beyond the borders of Raintree County.

He didn't foresee the Reconstruction of the South, the doomed experiment of giving the black man a vote by force of arms. He didn't foresee the scalawags and carpetbaggers who exploited the prostrate South. He didn't foresee the bayonet legislatures, the wrecked economy of the Cotton Kingdom. He didn't foresee the inflamed race hatred that war left behind, the lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan. He didn't foresee the impeachment of Andrew Johnson (who was a cousin of Johnny Shawnessy's on his mother's side), a shameful effort to wrest from an honest, if tactless, Executive the power vested in him by the Constitution, a cynical effort to destroy the balanced system of government. He didn't foresee the sectional feeling kept alive for years after the War by orators North and South. He didn't foresee the formation of a Solid South, a political bloc, reactionary and resentful, a separate culture in all but legal fact.

He didn't foresee that the greatest Union General of the War, Ulysses S. Grant, would be elected President, expressing for millions the wish to see a nation peaceful and united, and he didn't foresee that, once elected, this politically stupid man would become a helpless front for crooks in high place, who bled the Republic of wealth and honor alike.

He didn't foresee the Tweed Ring in New York, the Gas Ring in Philadelphia, the Whiskey Ring in St. Louis. He didn't foresee the daring speculations, the corrupt deals, the barefaced frauds. He didn't foresee the famous Corner in Gold, the Crédit Mobilier, the Panic of 1873. He didn't foresee Jay Gould, Jay Cooke, Jim Fisk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan—the new men, titans of industry, amassers of corrupt fortunes, exploiters of millions, barons of a new feudalism.