Raintree County (62 page)

The citizens of Raintree County picked up their hymnbooks. The ladies, daughters of Eve, fanned themselves briskly, looked shrewdly around at each other, twisted uncomfortably in their cloth, bone, and metal cages, badges of lost innocence.

The service over, Esther found Pa waiting for her outside the tent.

—I'd like to have a word with you, Esther, he said. I'll drive you to where you're goin'.

—I'm going to the schoolhouse to help fix the G.A.R. Banquet.

She got into the buggy with him and they drove slowly through parked vehicles to the National Road. Pa plucked at his black-veined
beard and played with the handle of the whip coiled in his lap.

—Esther, he said finally, weighing his words, you know my second wife has died and I'm alone at the old farm. Supposin' I was to say that you could come and bring the children, and I was to say that I'd take them in and help care for 'em like they was my own, and——

—I'll come back and visit any time, Pa, when I can bring Mr. Shawnessy.

Her father went on plucking at his beard. His voice was a heavy monotone.

—Supposin' you was to find out before the day was over that he wasn't a fittin' husband for you. And supposin' you was to regret marryin' him and runnin' away from your old pa the way you done fourteen years ago.

—That never could happen, Pa.

They sat in the buggy, side by side, the broad figure of Gideon Root, the slim figure of his daughter Esther. Both looked straight ahead. Their black eyes had the same look of stern endurance.

—It might happen, Pa said. And if it does, you remember what I said. The old home is waitin' for you, Esther.

They were turning west at the intersection. She could see Mr. Shawnessy sitting in the middle one of three chairs backed against the wall of the General Store. The buggy proceeded west toward the schoolhouse. A vague anxiety had touched her for the tall form in the black schoolmaster's suit. Was he entirely safe there sitting beside the Great Road?

She realized that she had never felt quite secure in her possession of this strange, wise, godlike creature who had ruled her life from childhood on. She had never quite severed herself from the dark earth of her origin, the obscure, violent parentage embodied in the figure on the seat beside her. Part of her was still living with a divided heart back in the era of a

House Divided

MAY RESULT FROM COMING ELECTION
SENATOR WARNS ON EVE OF DEPARTURE

Washington, July 1. On the eve of his departure from the Nation's Capital to mend political fences back home, the Hon. Garwood B. Jones, Senior Senator from Indiana, expressed his belief that the issues at stake in the present election are the gravest faced by this country since the Election of 1860. ‘Unless an intelligent citizenry registers an overwhelming voice of disapprobation against the forces of anarchy which are abroad in the land, we may face the prospect of a House Divided, such as that which confronted the immortal Lincoln in 1860. The opposing points of view are fundamental and irreconcilable. Our Union is threatened as never before, by a more insidious foe than open rebellion.' The Senator declined to elaborate further on this statement made in the course of some impromptu remarks during a little farewell gathering at the home of James C. Parks, longtime friend and supporter of the popular statesman from . . .

The
Indianapolis News-Historian
smelled damp and gray. Mr. Shawnessy glanced at the front page and reached the paper to the Perfessor. The Senator was still talking with the ladies of the Sitting and Sewing Society.

—Time for our history lesson, children, the Perfessor said, shaking out the paper and running his eyes over the front page. Let's see how the Supreme Being is ruling his creation in A.D. 1892. Hmmmmmm. I see by this that the Senator left Washington amid kisses and tears. If there were truth in print, this article ought to read as follows:

SENATOR FEASTS SELF AT WHORE'S HOUSE WOOS NEW VOTES AND OLD DRAB

(Epic Fragment from the
Cosmic Enquirer
)

Garwood Jones, the Senator from Indiana, who is solicitous of keeping his seat (size forty-six) in the Senate, threw a farewell party
for himself at the home of his current mistress, that versatile and available female, Mrs. Petronia Parks, whose alleged husband seems to be chronically and cornutely absent from the City on business. The party was well attended by a great many people whose political eggs are in the Senator's basket. The Senator delivered an impromptu speech, of which advance copies were available to the press. There was a great deal of fun, festivity, and other fricatives. The food was passable, the liquor was plentiful, Petronia was a bad girl again, and a good time was had by all.

The Perfessor flapped pages of the
News-Historian
, folded it neatly, dropped it on the ground, and plucked a notebook from his coatpocket.

—It's impossible to report the news as it really is. But, if you're interested, John, here's my digest of the news in the year of our Lord 1892, as compiled from the
News-Historians
of our Nation. I amused myself doing this on the train down.

He adjusted his pince-nez and read in a metallic monotone:

—LIFE IN OUR TIME

(Epic Fragments from the
Cosmic Enquirer
)

We the people of the United States in the year 1892, four hundred years after the Discovery of America, one hundred and sixteen years after the Declaration of Independence, seventy-two years after the founding of Raintree County, and nine years before the beginning of the Twentieth Century, have produced the following commentary on the great documents under which we are governed:

A MORE PERFECT UNION

The various political factions by which our Republic is controlled began to hate each other with official ferocity. The Republican Party, representing money and the main chance, held a convention in June and nominated Benjamin Harrison for the Presidency. The Democratic Party, representing money and the main chance, held a convention in June and nominated Grover Cleveland. The Populist Party, representing the people against their will, met in convention on July 4 for a result not yet known. All over America, government was conducted by the few for the few.

ESTABLISH JUSTICE

A colored man was jerked to Jesus in a lynching jubilee down in Memphis, Tennessee, to remind the Negro in an Election Year that the Constitution like the Decalogue is a Sunday instrument.

DOMESTIC TRANQUILLITY

The domestic manners of the Americans exhibited the usual spicy variety. A wife beat her husband's actress whore with a whip. An actress beat her stage-manager paramour with a whip. Jack the Ripper cut throats. A Boston man drowned his pregnant sweetheart in the Mystic River. Lesbian love crept into America's papers when Alice Mitchell, a nice little Southern girl of good family, jealously cut the throat of her sweetheart, Freda Ward, another nice little Southern girl of good family. In North Carolina, the hill people went on swapping wives according to a time-honored custom.

THE COMMON DEFENSE

Secretary of State James G. Blaine, the Plumed Knight, assisted by Sancho Panza Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-Third President of the United States, ran a course against various windmills. Little Chile talked sassy to Uncle Sam after Chileans beat up American sailors in Valparaiso. Sam made a fist. Chile yelled Uncle. The Eagle and the Lion engaged in controversy over sealing rights in the Bering Straits. The Seal, interested third party, was not consulted. As Election Day drew on apace, Ben and Blaine tugged vigorously at the Lion's Tail. While protecting Home Industries, the McKinley Tariff stifled economic recovery in America and free trade everywhere.

THE GENERAL WELFARE

Victims of youthful error of either sex were earnestly besought in all newspapers to use Sanativo, sure cure for nervous debility, early decay, and lost manhood, without the aid and publicity of a doctor.

THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY

In Pittsburgh, on the Fourth of July, the workers at the Homestead Mill prepared to defend their practical right to feed and clothe themselves and their families, while the employers prepared to defend their sacred right to accrue wealth by the enslavement of men. Three hundred miners were entombed somewhere. Strikes spread as Americans, the richest and happiest people in the world, starved.

GOD AND THE WORLD

The Reverend Lyman Abbott affirmed that God's Word was a typographical error and that Christianity was civilized paganism. He recommended the marriage of Darwin and Jesus for the salvation of the world. Little blind and deaf Helen Keller asked her instructor, Miss Sullivan, the following questions:

1. Who made God?

2. Where is God?

3. What did God make the universe out of?

4. What is a soul?

5. If God is love, why does he permit sin and suffering?

6. If God made all things, did he not also make the evil in the world?

Dozens of doctors and divines, rushing eagerly into print, flunked the exam.

SPORTS AND GAMES

A female heavyweight wrestler subtly illustrated the general trend of the Nineteenth Century by flattening a succession of males and planting her broad rump on their chests. Thomas Lake Harris was alleged to be conducting a sex community as naughtily nude as Oneida, with Edenic baths and other pastoral pastimes.

LOST AND FOUND

Various nude, ravished, dead girls' bodies in various parts of the United States.

MODERN ENLIGHTENMENT

At the suggestion of friends, a man dug up the corpse of his consumptive wife and cremated it lest her diseased lungs feed upon her children's.

CIRCUS MAXIMUS

Trains jumped trestles, rivers flooded, ships foundered, and hotels burnt to kill thousands and entertain millions.

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

People went to the theatre to see
Shiloh,
a play about the Civil War;
Around the World in Eighty Days,
a play about the speed of modern transportation;
The White Patrol,
a play about the Hay-market Bombing;
The White Slave
, a play about prostitution;
The Lost
Paradise
, a play about a factory owner and a factory waif; and
Cleopatra
, a play about Madame Sarah Bernhardt. In addition, they saw Lillian Russell, Shakespeare, the Vaudeville, and a Program of Gems, Varieties, Specialties, and Minstrel Comedians. A lionmaned Pole named Paderewski made a majestic assault on America's concert keyboards. Stoddard lectured. Mark Twain, America's most famous living writer, hacked out
The American Claimant
. Americans continued to read
Looking Backward, Progress and Poverty
, and
The Young Mail Carrier of the Rockies
. In Camden, New Jersey, Walt Whitman died obscure. Last words: ‘Warry, shift.'

SCIENTIFIC NOTES

Anthropology: John L. Sullivan, Boston Strong Boy, Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, in training for his title defense against Challenger Gentleman Jim Corbett, had his right biceps muscle measured and recorded a circumference of seventeen inches. Biology: A twoheaded boy was exhibited talking German on one stalk, Italian on the other. Technology: Reporters were admitted for the first time to an electrocution in Sing Sing. Mineralogy: There was a gold rush near Denver.

FINANCIAL PAGE

Bulls and bears butted and cuffed each other on Wall Street while the Nation ran down hill to another depression.

OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY

The Dove of Peace spread its wings on a world becalmed in one of its rare seasons of tranquillity, a blessing conferred upon humanity by the Industrial Revolution, bourgeois enterprise, and Queen Victoria. In Russia, millions were starving, and Count Leo Tolstoi, well-fed, bled for them. In America, on Memorial Day, people laid flowers on the graves of young men who died in the Civil War thirty years ago. Cash, not beauty or intelligence, ruled society. It was generally agreed in pulpits, newspapers, books, barrooms, brothels, congresses, caucuses, schoolrooms, and the Home that humanity had never been so blessed and that the Cosmos was infallibly moving toward a millennial century of Peace and Prosperity.

The Perfessor closed the notebook and returned it to his pocket.

—There, he said, is Life in Our Time. What do you think of it?

Mr. Shawnessy picked up the
News-Historian
and rubbed a sheet of it between his fingers.

—Fifty years from now, this paper will be a brittle dust. No rag content.

The Hon. Garwood B. Jones was making senatorial faces for the members of the Sitting and Sewing Society. Through the mist of Mr. Shawnessy's cigar, the Senator in his duckbottomed suit became a stiff cartoon on faded paper. Fat men made word balloons about forgotten issues. Around them swirled brittle bits of headlines. Brown dust of the year 1892 settled slowly in guts of old libraries.

—Remember the papers of the sixties, Professor? Much better paper. Life had an epic quality in those days of the rag content. There was something worth preserving. Thirty years ago the great issues were the Union and Human Slavery. Today, the main parties electioneer over the protective tariff and the free coinage of silver, both artificial issues. But down underneath, the great issues wait to be recognized again. They are still what they've always been in human affairs—Union and Human Slavery.