Raintree County (42 page)

—John, said the Senator, in a hoarse whisper when Mr. Shawnessy had finished his speech, give me a little information, will you? Is there anything left in the town that was here in 1850?

—The church was here then, Mr. Shawnessy whispered.

—Where is the goddam thing?

—Right on this street.

—Ladies and Gentlemen, the Senator said in a great voice. The emotion I feel as I . . .

VIEW OF CHILDHOOD HOME
FILLS STATESMAN WITH
EMOTION
(Epic Fragment from the
Cosmic Enquirer
)

In his reply, the Senator described the emotion in his breast as one that could find no fit utterance in words. He showed an amazing memory for the most minute details of his old stamping grounds, accurately recalling in his speech one of the oldest buildings in the town, the church, which he said he had often passed on his way to buy eggs from an old widow who resided a little way out in the country. The Senator found a few wellchosen words to express his feeling for his parents and especially his mother, than whom, he asserted, no finer or more virtuous woman ever lived. He concluded his short talk by saying that he was tired after his long trip and must be excused from a lengthy address as he intended to speak more fully of the weighty matters on his heart in the Address of the Day, which he would deliver in the Fourth of July Ceremonies that afternoon. Pursuant to this speech, the Senator listened to short addresses by three other members of the welcoming committee, who . . .

—Senator Jones, the Sitting and Sewing Society of Raintree County wish to tender you this token of their esteem, a symbol of good luck from the Gardenspot of Indiana and America, beautiful Raintree County. To a weaver of immortal garlands of eloquence, I give this garland of living and lovely petals, taken from the very soil that sired a great man.

—Madame, said the Perfessor in a low voice, is the Senator a horse or a flower?

—Madame, the Senator said, dropping shy lids on his beautiful eyes, I accept this lovely floral tribute. Believe me, Madame, I shall treasure this beautiful bouquet and shall be by it reminded that no more beautiful flowers grow anywhere in the world than those which are to be plucked in our own Raintree County, Gardenspot of the Universe, home, as you say, Madame, of beautiful flowers and, Madame, with your permission, of beautiful ladies.

—Your Excellency, the man with the clock said, as Delegate of the Solid Men's Club of Raintree County, we have a little gift here we would like to uh tender unto you, in appreciation and uh token of uh our esteem and cordial uh appreciation of uh the uh cordial and friendly uh feeling uh you have always uh manifested and shown and uh demonstrated toward the business men of our county, and which we appreciate it very much.

The Senator accepted the clock and, holding it like a bulky baby with soiled diaper, replied,

—My friend, this beautiful clock will occupy a prominent place on the mantel of my home in the Nation's Capital, Washington, D.C. I assure you, sir—and I wish to extend that assurance to each and every member of your enterprising and forward-looking organization—that I shall never gaze upon this clock without remembering the happy hours which I have spent with old friends, business acquaintances, and rural people in Raintree County. And you may be sure, my friend, that this clock shall record no single second during which my every thought, my every endeavor shall not have been devoted to the furtherance of Raintree County's best interests.

—Colonel Jones, the uniformed man said, the members of the Raintree County Post of the Grand Army of the Republic wish to give you this little medal commemorating your valiant efforts in their behalf. As the poet laureate of this organization, I have composed a little pome I would like to read:

In the forefront of the battle

For Union and Freedom and his Nation's Life,

He fought, nor once was daunted

In that fierce and bloody strife.

And when the battle's breath was through

And scream of shot and shell,

Did he forget his soldier-comrades true

Who for their country's flag had fought and fell?

The Good Old Cause he fought for

He never did let lag,

But fought right on in Congress and Nation

For the rights of the men who saved the dear old Flag.

Mr. Shawnessy swallowed audibly, and the Perfessor winced visibly.

—Comrade, the Senator said, deeply moved, I am deeply moved. I have no prouder recollection than the fact that I had a small, humble, and inconspicuous part in that Great War for the Preservation of our nation and for the perpetuity of Human Freedom. And you have my word for it, sir, which I hope you will transmit to my comrades-at-arms all over this County, that I do not mean for the Nation to forget the men who saved the Union. You, sir, have touched me more than I can express by the tender lyric which you have seen fit to dedicate to me.

Mr. Shawnessy could not get close to the Senator, who strode down the street shaking hands, swatting backs, and dispensing cigars.

—We have fallen upon degenerate days, John, the Perfessor said. Is this the heir of all the ages?

—Pardon me, gentlemen, said a young attaché of the Senator. I have here some little pictures of the Senator which I would like to circulate unobtrusively during the day. No political motives involved. Only the Senator's desire to gratify old friends who might be interested in a likeness of the most illustrious statesman of our time.

—Let me see, Mr. Shawnessy said, as the Senator's secretary lifted from a briefcase a bundle of cheap prints, three-by-five leaflets bearing a bold engraving of the Senator's face and the simple caption:

GARWOOD B. JONES, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE

—I'll leave the distribution of these entirely up to you, Mr. Shawnessy said.

—I'll take a pad, the Perfessor said. I am positive I can put them to good use.

When the secretary had moved on, the Perfessor said,

—I have an idea for a vast promotional stunt. Suppose Garwood contracted with leading toilet paper manufacturers to have his likeness faintly impressed upon every sheet of——

The Perfessor began to shake soundlessly.

—Thank you very much, said the President of the Sitting and Sewing Society, accepting a leaflet from the Perfessor. By the way, what does the B stand for?

—Give you one guess, said the Perfessor.

Mr. Shawnessy holding one of the likenesses in his hand walked on, smiling faintly. From the paper in his hand stared vacantly the face of Senator Garwood B. Jones, Bumwiper Candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

A face fluttered down on a republic of his memory, raining grayly on hundreds of court house squares in the time of the prophets and martyrs.

Blow ye the trumpet, blow!

Blow the lone far bugle of the conscience abroad in the Republic in ancient days! Send the hornnotes crowding in the court house squares all over the Republic! Awaken the conscience of the sleeping North! Blow ye the trumpet, blow, and let the blind walls crumble.

I saw the bitten granite of the face. I could not bear the bitter sadness of those eyes in the Court House Square.

Blow ye the trumpet, blow the gladly-solemn sound!

But (you will remember) I was he who lay with one of the daughters of those Babylonian valleys. Let all men everywhere know that I was forgetful of duty. Beneath a tree in summertime, I was held long, long on the flanks of a daughter of Egypt. The precious seed of the chosen I gave to guilty ground stained by the bondsman's blood. Let all men know how I slunk from the bosom of my parents, guilty and afraid.

Let all the nations know, to earth's remotest bound . . .

Let it be repeated by word of mouth, by letter, by items in the corners of the inside pages of the wellthumbed weeklies how I sinned with a daughter of the Philistines.

Who was it then that I took by the supple waist? With whom did I taste of a scarlet fruit close to serpent waters? Whence did they come, those darkskinned patient generations, to bear witness to my guilt? Was my flesh their flesh?

The Year of Jubilee is come!
Let it be known all over the Republic. Let it be told by trumpets and by proclamations and by

and on being advised that there was one there for him, Johnny had lost no time getting into Freehaven. But as he came through the Square, he saw the big crowd around the railroad station a half block north. The excitement there seemed so unusual that he went up to see what it was.

At the depot the crowd was even bigger than he had thought. There were scores of people sitting in buggies or standing in little groups. The telegrapher at his table just inside an open window was taking a dispatch. Garwood Jones and Cash Carney were in the group of men crowding around the window.

—It was a fool thing to do, Garwood was saying, and I hope they string him up.

—String who up? Johnny said. What's going on anyway?

Garwood turned and took the cigar out of his mouth. His sleek face was streaked with sweat and flushed with excitement.

—I keep forgetting you hillbillies don't get into town but once a month, he said.

Cash Carney, impeccably dressed as usual, said with an air of detachment,

—There's been a big insurrection of slaves at Harper's Ferry in Virginia. A man named John Brown that used to do all that feudin' in Kansas seems to be at the bottom of it. This old Brown, near as we can find out, got a band of armed men and captured the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. They plan to give out arms to the slaves and spread a revolt through the South. But according to the last report Federal troops have surrounded the place. Brown and his men have been holding out for two days.

—By God, I hope he succeeds, a citizen said.

—That's talkin', Bill, a second citizen said, thrusting his way into the crowd near the window.

—Say, what do you fellows want, anyway? Garwood said. Civil war?

—Civil war! Shucks! What are you talking about! Civil war!

—Why, man, Garwood said, didn't you hear? He attacked the Federal Arsenal. That's an attack on the People, on the Government of the United States, on the Constitution.

—It ain't an attack on any government I want any part of, a man said.

—Why, man, Garwood said, that's treason. Much as I feel for the lot of the Black Man, I can't see any justification for a deed of bloody violence that will hurl the whole country into civil war. Things can't be settled that way.

—If they won't
give
the niggers their freedom, seems like the niggers ought to have the right to
fight
for it, the man said doggedly.

But Garwood got much the best of the argument, and a majority of the people on the Square seemed to agree reluctantly with his point of view.

Meanwhile Johnny got hold of the latest paper and read the reports of the raid. He remembered how he had read years ago of this same John Brown fighting in Kansas. There had been an undeclared war between slave and free elements, but it had been beyond the Mississippi where men were always fighting something anyway—Indians, buffalo, Mexicans, the earth itself. That wound in the flank of the Republic had closed; the arid West had drunk and dried the gore of those old fights as if they had never been at all. Their distant tumult had dwindled and become lost in the headlines of onward-pressing days. And yet the name ‘John Brown' had been a tough seed waiting in darkness. Now it had sprung to bloodier fruition in Virginia, Mother of States and Presidents. It was almost as though the deed had been done in Raintree County, so vast and instantaneous was the shock.

Someone had dared to defy the most anciently rooted wrong in the Republic, a wrong grown sacred in the very measure of its age and enormity. Someone had shed blood on the porch of the Republic.

One man had taken the jawbone of an ass to shatter an army. It was sheer act, founded on sheer faith. It restored the age of miracle. The people of Raintree County waited for word of this amazing madman in the hope that an enterprise of such grandly crazy proportions would have a success equally grand and crazy.

—Say, he's a tough old scoundrel. By God, it wouldn't surprise me any did he cause a lot of trouble, men were saying on the Square.

—A few more men like him, and we'd see about all this talk of slavery and disunion.

—By God, we need more men with gunpowder in their guts.

—Walked right into a United States Arsenal and held the place up. In my opinion, John Brown is the Greatest Living American.

Around four o'clock in the afternoon, Johnny walked back to the Post Office.

—Do you have a letter there for John Shawnessy?

—Just a minute, the postmaster said.

He sorted through some letters and brought one over. It had a New Orleans postmark. Johnny took the letter and started out. There was a dark passageway between the office and the street, where he stopped and turned the letter over and over in his hands.

—One against a thousand, a citizen outside said. But they'll hang him as sure as shootin'!

—What's the latest? a second citizen said.

—Still hemmed in and fightin', I guess. The whole goldern U.S. Army! What's a man to do?

Johnny began to tear the letter open. It was only words, inklines on an envelope. It had come to him from beyond the walls of Raintree County. It had come from a remote earth, jasmine-scented, where it was always summer. He unfolded the letter and read it over once quickly. He felt as though he could have written the words himself, so often had he dreamed them. The words said what he had always feared, what he had known would come to pass.

He didn't want to leave this passageway. Outside there were a thousand eyes. People who had no worries were on the lookout for a tender flesh to crucify. He fumblingly put the letter in his pocket, drew it out again, minutely inspected the outside of the envelope, put it back into his pocket and felt—but conquered—a burning desire to take it out again. He stuffed a handkerchief down on it. He leaned against the wall and waited. Someone would come in and find him leaning insanely against this wall and would know that he was guilty of something. He panted, trying to breathe the hot blush of guilt from his face. Footsteps approached. He walked swiftly out of the door, almost ran into someone.